Post by eclipse on Feb 10, 2014 20:12:05 GMT 9.5
Not enough lithium...
This raises the question: why am I not hearing more about the 'boron economy' out there in cyberspace? People positively laugh until I tell them James Hansen has reviewed it positively.
PS: Articles like this one indicate a major new American Lithium reserve, satisfying today's world demand for 720 years. But that's the problem. Today's demand for lithium is pathetic compared to what will be required after peak oil. Today's lithium use has only created a world of 380,000 EV's. We need to replace 2 billion cars with EV's.
If all other lithium industries suddenly evaporated, we could imagine using the entire world lithium production to make nothing but Nissan Leafs. At 2 × 107 kg of lithium per year, we can make 8.3 million of them. Using all 9.9 × 109 kg of the world's lithium reserves, we can make 4.1 billion Leafs; using all the identified lithium resources (2.55 × 1010 kg), we can make 10.6 billion Leafs.
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.
This suggests to me that if all the world's cars are going to be made electric, it is likely that a mixture of battery technologies will be used. It is certainly possible to build millions of electric vehicles with lithium-ion batteries, but it may not be possible to make billions of them.
large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/:
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.
This suggests to me that if all the world's cars are going to be made electric, it is likely that a mixture of battery technologies will be used. It is certainly possible to build millions of electric vehicles with lithium-ion batteries, but it may not be possible to make billions of them.
large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/:
This raises the question: why am I not hearing more about the 'boron economy' out there in cyberspace? People positively laugh until I tell them James Hansen has reviewed it positively.
PS: Articles like this one indicate a major new American Lithium reserve, satisfying today's world demand for 720 years. But that's the problem. Today's demand for lithium is pathetic compared to what will be required after peak oil. Today's lithium use has only created a world of 380,000 EV's. We need to replace 2 billion cars with EV's.