[HN Gopher] Where in the galaxy will we mine lithium?
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Where in the galaxy will we mine lithium?
Author : jelliclesfarm
Score : 49 points
Date : 2022-04-18 18:54 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciof.fi)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciof.fi)
| wardedVibe wrote:
| If we're talking about mining lithium from elsewhere in the solar
| system or even galaxy, I'm willing to be that fusing hydrogen and
| helium to get there is a much more energy efficient route. Maybe
| this is something you do where you don't need as dense a form of
| energy, but still. It's only the 3rd element. Rare earth metal
| mining in the asteroid belt is the one most likely to be
| necessary.
| maydup-nem wrote:
| isn't it supposed to be in shale outcrops all over the ocean
| floor?
| throwaway4220 wrote:
| Article has spoilers for expanse, Star Trek discovery, for all
| mankind
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Ilus, of course
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Gonya be rich, ke?
| neals wrote:
| So what does lithium have that other elements don't, to be so
| populair with the battery crowd?
| zekica wrote:
| It is very reactive (as it is in the first column of the
| periodic table - Alkali metal).
|
| Other group of very reactive elements are in the second-last
| column such as Fluorine but they can't be as easily used in
| batteries for other reasons.
|
| Lithium is also very light - 0.534 g/cm3 compared to copper
| with 8.96 g/cm3.
| dotancohen wrote:
| One free electron, in a nice stable element that makes
| molecules easy to handle at room temperature.
| klodolph wrote:
| I see a couple comments here that don't understand why Lithium
| is a good choice.
|
| Batteries push electrons around a circuit. This is powered by a
| redox reaction, with half of the reaction occurring on each
| terminal. One half of the reaction produces electrons, the
| other half consumes electrons, and these electrons travel from
| where they are produced (the oxidation half-reaction) to where
| they are consumed (the reduction half-reaction).
|
| However, one half reaction simply produced electrons forever,
| it would accumulate a positive charge. So something inside the
| battery has to also move charge around to balance things out.
| This thing that moves should have a positive charge, and move
| in the same direction as the electrons, except through the
| battery instead of through the circuit. Your electron moves
| from the battery anode (-) through the circuit to the battery
| cathode (+), and something else with a positive charge _also_
| moves from the battery anode (-) to the battery cathode (+),
| except it moves through the battery instead of moving through
| the circuit.
|
| In other words, a positive ion. Lithium is the smallest
| positive ion you can normally work with.
|
| You'd think hydrogen would be smaller, but it actually forms a
| hydronium ion in aqueous solution. Hydrogen fuel cells are a
| lot like batteries that use hydrogen + oxygen, but the
| chemistry of hydrogen fuel cells make them not suitable as
| batteries, and hydrogen is hard to store. I'm sure I'm getting
| some of this wrong, I did study some _very_ basic
| electrochemistry in college, so I would encourage people
| interested in electrochemistry to read more about it or even do
| simple experiments at home (it 's surprisingly easy).
| addaon wrote:
| This is a great description. The one thing that's missing is
| /why/ a smaller ion is better. Is this because of energy lost
| by some equivalent of drag as the ion travels through the
| solution?
| klodolph wrote:
| Smaller is better because you want your battery to be
| small. If you want a small battery, you need to use fewer
| atoms or put the atoms closer together (smaller atoms).
| Weight is also important. Lithium is very light and very
| small.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Well, for one thing it weighs less for every unit of
| positive charge.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| It's in the name of the battery, so many seem to think that
| it's the main ingredient.
| adastra22 wrote:
| It is though? I mean chemically speaking, how are lithium
| ions not the main / active ingredient?
| elzbardico wrote:
| We will probably come up with alternative chemistries. NiFe while
| not portable, is great for stationary applications. I would
| prefer to have a bank of NiFe batteries at home than a tesla
| wall. And probably my insurance company would think the same.
| otikik wrote:
| If we get access to portals or wormholes, this might come in
| handy:
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.04749
| coolhoody wrote:
| I love articles like these for their optimism -- as they imply we
| will not be mining it in the metaverse for schrute bucks, or
| scouting new vegas for bottle caps.
| alx__ wrote:
| Sorta unrelated to the article. But it linked to a NASA blog post
| on how the moon was formed. There's an embedded YouTube video
| from 2006 that has a computer simulation on how the moon was
| formed.
|
| Was NOT expecting a (drum'n'bass) banger of a track on that video
| when the protomoon hits the protoearth. Shazam couldn't properly
| identify. I love old internet posts
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sr-MriOCzw
| CPLX wrote:
| The 90's man. You had to be there.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Haha that second paragraph was great.
|
| Says at the end of the video "Music - Kyo Ichinose" but I
| didn't have much luck hunting down the actual track.
| alx__ wrote:
| Oh good eye! I see now his recent stuff, but nothing from
| that era. Probably a score created just for it.
|
| Additional lol. Found a NYT link to the animation again, but
| it's in a obsolete format. (Requires Real Player)
| [deleted]
| Shadonototra wrote:
| by the time we are able to move from planet to planet, i don't
| think we'll need lithium anymore
| robbedpeter wrote:
| On the one hand, I think it's sensible to assume we'll find
| something better or more suitable, but in the other hand, we're
| dealing with fundamental physics, not consumer preference or
| any sort of abstraction away from function.
|
| To produce food, we will need carbon. Structural materials will
| likely be steel or iron alloys. Energy storage works best with
| lithium for practical engineering reasons, and it's highly
| unlikely some other element will replace it.
|
| The advantage of basic, high availability elements is you can
| pick up the raw material and process it almost anywhere. The
| distribution of elements is predictable, so unless you have a
| huge supply of unobtainium, it's better to use things you can
| scrounge on the way to or where you're going.
|
| In a multi-species interstellar civilization, it's also
| reasonable to think that other starfaring technology will share
| similarity with your own - having a stockpile of lithium might
| mean you have a basic trade good.
| baking wrote:
| Isn't phosphorus the true essential trade good? Necessary for
| life as we know it, but rare outside the solar system.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Lithium is pretty useful in various fusion applications, which
| are likely to fuel the interplanetary economy.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| If you like to think about interstellar travel, one interesting
| option is that somebody (something?) could develop the ability to
| live independently of stars based on fusion. In this scenario you
| wouldn't have to move very fast, 10,000 years to get to the
| nearest star is about right, but you might lose all interest in
| dry inner solar system planets like the Earth (compared to
| something like Pluto which is closer to 50% water) before you get
| there.
|
| If you could find lithium you could breed tritium and run a D + T
| fuel cycle, which creates a massive flux of neutrons (maybe need
| Pb or Be for multiplication) and will let you breed extra T that
| you can let decay to He3. D + He3 is a good candidate for a fuel
| for "fast" interstellar travel that might make the crossing in 50
| years.
|
| Alternately if you can make D + D work you can certainly live
| between the stars and you can still harvest some bred T and He3
| for "mobile" applications.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Once you are out of a gravity well as a civ, why would you
| bother with them economically aside from tourism? Unless we get
| antigravity, or loop launch / space elevator / space hook sized
| planetoids (I think Mars is the practical limit of space
| elevators last I looked).
|
| Red dwarfs appear ideal. Very long lived, and there do seem to
| be planets and asteroid material in them. A globular cluster of
| mostly red dwarfs would be an ideal long-term place for an
| "interstellar" civ. The stars drift as close as 1/3 light year.
|
| Look at what some of the projected mineral yields of asteroids
| are. And comets can probably get you other element mixes as
| needed.
|
| Yes, I think Lithium will be be available artificially with
| some form of fusion. Or you capture solar wind material
| perhaps.
| countvonbalzac wrote:
| But do humans really want to live on pluto? We evolved to live
| in nature, surrounded by plants and animals. I just don't see
| people wanting to live on a cold rock.
| bullen wrote:
| 1. Electricity is not an energy source, you need to burn
| something else to create it.
|
| 2. Wind, Solar, Nuclear and Hydro can not be built with
| electricity at scale, you need coal, oil and gas to melt steel
| and burn lime stone for concrete.
|
| 3. You cannot make food with electricity at scale; tractors,
| trucks and fertilizers need hydrocarbons.
|
| 4. The tree is the best solar panel and battery in one, it
| created all coal, oil and gas on the planet. Only snag is that it
| takes a couple of hundred thousand years for the trees to become
| coal, oil and gas!
|
| 5. Going into space is a completely meaningless exercise until we
| can establish that we can colonize another planet self-
| sustainably. We are very far away from making that happen because
| it would need trees and an atmosphere which take more time to
| terraform than we have hydrocarbons left on Earth to still reach
| Mars f.ex at scale (enough people to bootstrap the new planet)
| when it's fully terraformed.
|
| These combined make it pretty clear that the only realistic
| option is to consume less energy. Stop driving. Stop flying. Live
| in a smaller space. Work from home. Consume less of everything
| and try to produce something meaningful with what you allready
| have!
|
| Find a purpose in quality, instead of quantity.
|
| Please use arguments instead of only the down button?
|
| Just because you don't like the truth doesn't make it less true.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| if 100% of hydrocarbons are used to make things vs. power
| things then they would last a lot longer than otherwise.
| [deleted]
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Is it Earth? I think we mine all of our lithium on Earth right
| now.
| spindle wrote:
| I've always been amazed (despite being someone who's not easily
| amazed by Science Facts) that helium and lithium (and, less
| amazingly, hydrogen) were produced in large quantities in the
| early universe, long before there were stars.
|
| So I'm envisioning a market for boutique "Big Bang" lithium,
| guaranteed not to have been produced in a star. It makes your
| engine run so much more smoothly.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Gourmet batteries, for the discerning audiophile, er...
| automophile.
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