Amount of lithium available is not a limitation for several orders of magnitude more (at least until well after Kardashev Type 1), and the lithium is not consumed when you have to replace the batteries, a cost which is already included in these calculations.
"As of January 2010, the USGS estimated world total lithium reserves at 9.9×109 kg (economically extractable now) and identified lithium resources at 2.55 × 1010 kg (potentially economic). Most of the identified resources are in Bolivia and Chile (9 × 109 kg and 7.5 × 109 kg, respectively). World lithium production is currently on the order of 2 × 107 kg per year.
If we would like to have a North American standard of living for everyone in the world – say, 1 car for every 2 people – then we would need about 3.4 billion Nissan Leafs. This would use 32% of the identified resources (all known lithium in the world), or 82% of the reserves (all lithium that is currently economic to produce). Even with widespread recycling, that seems like an unsustainable prospect.
Remember that the limits on battery capacity are fundamental. The only ways this percentage can go down are:
Battery capacity exceeds 73% of the theoretical maximum (unlikely)
New deposits of lithium are discovered and made economic (unknowable)
Smaller lithium-ion batteries are used (shorter range)
Fewer cars are built with lithium-ion batteries."
I'm assuming that you mean 9.9 × 10⁹ kg of economically-extractable-now reserves and 2.55 × 10¹⁰ kg of potentially economic reserves, not 2575.5 kg, which is what 2.55 × 1010 would work out to.
The estimates of lithium abundance in the earth's crust have a low end of 20 ppm. The crust averages about 40 km thick and 3 g/cc in the 29% of the Earth that has continents, which works out to 1.5 × 10¹⁴ m², 5.9 × 10¹⁸ m³, 1.8 × 10²² kg of rock, and 3.6 × 10¹⁷ kg of lithium. This is a bit over ten million times more lithium than the USGS's estimated "potentially economic world lithium reserves".
There's also 2.3 × 10¹⁴ kg of lithium dissolved in seawater, but that is a much smaller amount than the amount in the crust. However, it's still ten thousand times larger than the USGS's estimate.
I think world lithium production is actually about 4.3 × 10⁷ kg per year (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Reserves) which would take 200 years to exhaust the "economically extractable now" number you give (rather than the 500 years you'd get with the numbers you give). It seems like a safe bet that some new mining technologies will become available before even 2100, let alone 2219.
How much energy is that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Table_of_energy... says Li-ion batteries contain 0.36–0.88 MJ/kg, or slightly higher if you only count the mass of the lithium rather than the entire battery. Conservatively taking 0.36 MJ per kg of lithium (which assumes battery technology doesn't improve — almost-nonrechargeable lithium-metal batteries get five times that much energy per kg of lithium), the 9.9 × 10⁹ kg of lithium "economically extractable now" would hold 3.6 petajoules; the 2.3 × 10¹⁴ kg of lithium in seawater would hold 83 exajoules; and the 3.6 × 10¹⁷ kg of lithium in the continental crust would hold 130 zettajoules.
Current world marketed energy consumption is on the order of 5.7 × 10²⁰ joules per year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption), which is 18 terawatts. Incident solar power on the Earth (the Kardashev Type 1 benchmark) is 130 petawatts. So the 3.6 PJ of "economically extractable now" lithium is only three minutes of world marketed energy consumption, but the 83 EJ of seawater lithium is about 1.7 months of world marketed energy consumption. Even so, that's only 10 minutes of total terrestrial insolation. But the 130 zettajoules of continental crustal lithium is 12 days' worth of total terrestrial insolation.
So, that's the basis of my conclusion about terrestrial lithium being sufficient to provide energy storage until we pass Kardashev Type 1. Can you check my calculations, please?
Yeah, I definitely am not contemplating storing weeks' worth of energy in batteries; 12 hours is adequate, 36 hours is plenty. I am contemplating using enormous amounts of energy when and where it's available and using batteries and transmission lines to enable a reduced level of activity at night and under clouds, a reduced level similar to today's level of energetic activity. Antarctic and undersea research stations probably still need nuclear reactors.
Yes, your calculations are correct. I was just wondering if we use all of that Li to store energy or we need it in car batteries, laptops, mobile phones, etc. You also leave out details about the production of batteries. Purely from the energy point of view you are right but what about the manufacturing and maintenance point of view? Would not be there some additional limitations?
That's a boil the oceans solution, though - it's doesn't do anything useful until you've converted a large percentage of all roads, and it's very expensive.
I wonder how much it would cost per mile of road to do this. I suspect you could get a huge benefit by electrifying major highways to start, for example:
* The 5 on the west coast, connecting Seattle/Portland/Sacramento/SF/LA/San Diego
* Route 94 in the midwest, connecting Minneapolis/Madison/Milwaukee/Chicago/Detroit
* Route 95 on the east coast, connecting Boston/NY/Philly/Baltimore/DC
Meaning that if you drive any of those routes, including a few hundred miles off the highway, you never have to worry about gas or electricity.
It's an option, though. And one that might be cheaper or more practical than expecting everyone to buy giant lithium-ion batteries in case they want to go on a road trip.
You don't really need to convert a "large percentage" of roads, just the major highways that people use for long-distance travel. Of those, you wouldn't need to convert the whole length, either. Maybe you'd electrify one mile out of every ten or something like that.
Electrified roads could also be a huge boon to long-haul trucking.
