
Massive deposit of lithium found in Wyoming could meet all U.S. demand - MikeCapone
http://www.treehugger.com/cars/vast-reserves-lithium-found-wyoming-could-meet-all-us-demand.html
======
morpher
This article (and the UW press release they quote) state that the estimated
228,000 tons of lithium present at the site is "enough to meet annual U.S.
demand". I'm not sure what this last statement means since it isn't qualified
by "for XXX years assuming no increase in consumption".

According to the USGS[1], US consumption for 2011 was estimated at ~2000 tons.
So, this source is, indeed, significant. According to the article, it is also
twice as large as the other known US source (in Nevada), so combined, the US
has ~150 years worth of domestic Li at its current consumption rates.

[1]
[https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lithium/mc...](https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lithium/mcs-2012-lithi.pdf)

~~~
apendleton
Seems to me like current and near-future levels are the only thing really
worth discussing at this point, since predicting future demand for lithium
seems ridiculously challenging. On the one hand, if electric cars actually
take off (a big if), it seems at this point like lithium ion will be the most
likely energy storage mechanism, so you could see a huge ramp-up in demand. On
the other, if supercapacitor technology delivers on the promise some think it
now has, it (or some other as-yet-unidentified energy storage or production
technology) could pull the bottom out from under the lithium ion battery
market. The outcome of each of those could shift future demand by a couple of
orders of magnitude in either direction vs. current demand.

But probably not for at least a decade or so. So we may as well talk about
this in today's terms.

~~~
dredmorbius
However we _can_ look at what possible applications of rechargeable batteries
are, and how known reserves fit into that picture.

Humans are looking very hard to replace our go-to energy storage media: solid
coal and liquid petroleum, both of fossil origin. We'll have to replace them
under one of two circumstances: we exhaust them, or we cannot continue to
abide the CO2 they produce. We're likely to run into both constraints within
the next 20 years, if not already.

And when you start scaling known reserves of known battery component minerals
against the task of providing, say, affordable transportation to a large
portion of the planet's population, or even that portion which presently owns
cars, the math starts falling apart pretty quickly.

Lithium is nice for mobile and transportation applications because it's light
and has a high storage density relative to mass. Lead-acid batteries also
work, and there's probably enough lead to supply a lot of automobiles, but
it's messy and toxic and heavy.

When you start looking to grid-scale storage, even lead, as abundant as it is,
comes up short: [http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-
bat...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/)

More likely: molten-salt or liquid metal batteries. They're heavy and have
lower power densities, but the raw materials are cheap and abundant. Thermal
storage (again, molten salt, but used as a heat transfer fluid) and flywheels
(very expensive relative to capacity, and having their own engineering
challenges) might also see application, the latter having benefits for being
able to respond very rapidly to large changes in supply or demand.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
>Humans are looking very hard to replace our go-to energy storage media: solid
coal and liquid petroleum, both of fossil origin.

So you're ignoring the stored energy vs. energy storage distinction. Yes, yes,
oil and coal are storing energy from the sun from a billion years ago. But the
energy there is already stored. You can't replace that by making a better
battery, you need somewhere to get the energy to charge your battery. If you
have a cost effective source of energy (wind/nuclear/solar/etc.) to replace
them, you can at worst produce carbon-neutral oil synthetically, though
alternatives may be more efficient. That doesn't mean storage isn't a problem
(efficiency is king there), but it's a different problem -- if we solved the
supply problem then regardless of storage we could shut down existing coal and
oil fired electrical generating stations. If we only solved the storage
problem we would still be burning coal to make electricity.

~~~
dredmorbius
> So you're ignoring the stored energy vs. energy storage distinction. Yes,
> yes, oil and coal are storing energy from the sun from a billion years ago.

While that's an astute observation, it's not my point.

It's also somewhat imprecise: most petrochemical deposits were made ~650 - 65
million years ago. But that's just a nit.

I'm not concerned with where and when existing hydrocarbons were deposited.
Merely their very high energy density and (for now) extremely high prevalence.
High enough that it's more feasible to operate cars by _combusting_ petroleum
than it is to run them on batteries with 10 year lifetimes and 93%
recoverability in recycling, _simply because there isn't enough accessible
lithium on the planet to create enough batteries to replace the cars already
on the road_.

Even if you had a cost-effective energy source, lithium-ion batteries aren't
going to give us enough storage capacity. Due to a shortage of storage medium,
not energy.

Which means something else has to give: we don't all own private automobiles
(leasing or hiring autonomous vehicles when needed might make this possible).
Or we use other storage media: lead-acid, flywheels, compressed air. Or, as
you suggest (and I suspect), synthetically generated hydrocarbons, either
liquid or gas.

The known efficiencies of this last process are low: at best, maybe 10% of
incident sunlight, more likely somewhere between 0.1% to 1%. Which is actually
far better than the net efficiency of the production of existing fossil
hydrocarbons, it's just that they've accumulated over hundreds of millions of
years. As the paper below illustrates, in _one_ year (1997), human fossil fuel
consumption amounted to some 422 _times_ the plant matter fixed via
photosynthesis (net primary productivity or NPP). Fossil fuel consumption from
1751 - 1998 corresponds to over 13,300 years of NPP. Which is actually
somewhat less than I'd have thought.

Net photosynthetic efficiency is around 2.4%. Conversion of biomass to
hydrocarbons is the great unknown. Transportation amounts for roughly 1/4 of
global energy use. I'll assume that large measures of this might be
substituted by other than liquid fuels (EVs, human power, electrified
passenger and freight rail, substituting high-speed rail for air), but a
significant portion of long-haul land, water, and virtually all air traffic
will likely require a highly dense chemical fuel. That will mean one or more
of: synthetic (carbon-neutral) hydrocarbons, carbon offsets while continuing
to use fossil fuels (while they last), and/or a hell of a lot less
transportation. Or create a runaway greenhouse situation.

Frankly none of the options is great.

Replacing _all_ present fossil fuel use with existing biomass would require
22% of the _present_ total primary productivity of the planet, a 50% increase
of the amount of NPP humans already consume. And that's if we're counting on
using biomass directly, not relying on conversion to other forms (e.g.:
ethanol), which drastically reduces net photosynthetic conversion efficiency.
Last time I checked, we don't typically run cars on wood or straw (though
ships once ran predominantly on solid coal).

[http://globalecology.stanford.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange...](http://globalecology.stanford.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.pdf)

------
a_p
The U.S has an enormous amount of rare earth metals. [1] But the processes of
extracting the ore have such a horrendous effect on the environment that the
only country willing to mine the metals in significant quantities is China,
and the villages in China near the mining sites have suffered as a result [2].
The U.S is rife with abuses of the environment — mountaintop removal mining,
anyone? — but so far no one has been willing to match the rare earth metal
production levels of China.

[1]
[http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2642&from=rs...](http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2642&from=rss_home)

[2] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/aug/07/china-
rare...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-
village-pollution)

------
billiam
The most important implication of this discovery is that while the price of
lithium could plunge, decreasing the costs of lithium vehicle batteries,
unless we put a system in place that uses regulatory and market forces to
guarantee that this lithium is recovered and recycled, we will have a huge
environmental problem on our hands. Disposal and sequestering of lithium metal
is a significant part of the overall cost of an EV-focused transport system.
Global demand by 2020 is projected by USGS to be about 300,000 tons a year, so
the effect of this single discovery might not be that large; the major
advantage is preventing China from exercising monopoly power on Li production.
But I am confident that many more discoveries are out there (I used to be a
geologist and worked around Silver Peak in the past), so I think the time is
now to start figuring out how to avoid taking all that Li in brine and
spreading it throughout our waste stream.

------
dmm
For the most part, the cost of production is what matters. If Chilean lithium
costs $x and US lithium costs $3x then it doesn't matter how is in the ground
in the US, the lithium will come from Chile.

~~~
rosser
Until Chinese demand for Chilean a/o Bolivian lithium drives its price over
$3x, at which point, having a local supply this big is a _huge_ deal.

~~~
psgibbs
Really, only in the sense that this source pushes out the aggregate supply
curve, delaying the point in time when prices get higher.

Practically, once prices become 3x of current, that's what everyone will pay
on average, it just means (in this thought experiment) that some miner
sourcing from America is marginally profitable, while some miner from South
America is very profitable.

~~~
rosser
Did the existence of shale oil or tar sands delay crude breaking $80/barrel?
More expensively exploited resources typically aren't exploited until their
market price makes such exploitation profitable. We've known about the vast
amounts of oil under the Bakken Formation since the 1950s, for example.

If this stuff is more expensive than Bolivian lithium, we won't do more than
tinker with it until it's not, and consequently I wouldn't expect it to have
much impact on the price curve — we'll all still be buying the same stuff
until then.

------
1053r
Digging through the details in the original article that treehugger links to,
it appears that the size of this deposit is not entirely characterized, but
that it probably corresponds to approximately 9 years of global lithium
production at current rates. (228K tons, with usage of 25K tons per year).

~~~
rhizome
The Jevons Paradox should change those numbers considerably.

~~~
ignostic
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Jevons Paradox attempted to show that (for
example) coal prices didn't go down when we learned to get more energy from
the same coal. It would NOT apply to increased efficiency in coal MINING.

The Jevons Paradox - in my understanding - applies to our use of a resource,
not its collection. I'm sure our demand for lithium will go up, but again
that's not the Jevons Paradox - that's basic supply and demand.

~~~
rhizome
JP will be in reaction to increased demand (usage).

------
hkmurakami
Isn't the main limiting factor of lithium (and other rare earth metals) the
willingness to handle the refining process within one's borders rather than
the amount of the metal available in deposits?

My understanding is that the reason China has such a huge fraction of lithium
production is driven largely by their willingness to execute the very dirty
refining process themselves.

~~~
maxerickson
I think you may be thinking of rare earth metals.

------
frakkingcylons
Does anyone know if this would affect the price of Li-on batteries? I'm
curious to know if it would make Tesla's cars cheaper.

~~~
mchannon
What few people realize about lithium batteries is it's not the lithium that's
scarce and expensive, but the alloying elements that go in to make the
electrode- most EV batteries use more Cobalt by weight than Lithium, and
Cobalt is more expensive per pound.

Lithium's one of the lightest metals, so a little bit goes a long way.

~~~
jrabone
IIRC cobalt is not only scarce, it's also mostly mainly produced in the Congo
and Zambia, and anywhere referred to as the "Democratic Republic of..." is
probably not as politically stable as one might hope.

------
ctingom
I recall that a large reserve was also found in Afghanistan a few years ago.
Link: [http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-06/why-finding-
li...](http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-06/why-finding-lithium-
afghanistan-big-deal-even-if-it-never-leaves-ground)

------
tripzilch
What I'm curious about (instead of whether I can afford an electric car for
cheaper or not), is how this will affect Bolivia, then.

On the one hand it's a major source of income swiped away underneath them. But
on the other hand, if this source of income was property in the hands of only
a few (I'm not at all sure if/how this is the case), shaking things up may
have very different consequences (also not necessarily good ones btw).

------
salmonellaeater
The article doesn't say who owns the mineral rights to the land containing the
site. If it's a private owner then they are the ones who have hit the jackpot.
If it's government-owned, then the benefit we (as a nation) get from it
depends on how well it's administered.

------
johnohara
This discovery gives breathing room to the ongoing research into the use of
graphene to improve and extend the capabilities of lithium-ion batteries.

It's equally interesting that both seem recyclable as well.

------
thebiglebrewski
I'm so happy, cuz today I found lithium on in here

------
steffenfrost
Now I am depressed.

~~~
druiid
I got a chuckle out of this, but really.. this is HN, not Fark.com.

