this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
467 points (95.5% liked)
Technology
58150 readers
4218 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I wish they gave a $ per KG estimate in your link about harvesting with strings. The methods detailed in this Journal article gives estimates of $2-5 per KG which is like a 5 to 12x return at current prices.
I wonder if you could couple that string method with desalination plants? Take the brine output, extract the lithium with the string method before releasing back into the ocean. Two birds one stone sorta deal. I also wonder if the string method is as technically easy to implement and separate the end products, and it's just a lot of labor if this will end up economically benefitting countries with extremely low wages. If so, that could be ecologically very bad, especially if it's possible to do with salt water brine. (As it could incentivize people to pump ocean water inland to make brine pools for harvesting).