carbonates

Response to Jack Lifton's 'Lithium Batteries: Nothing But Illusion'

Lithium is toxic, eMedicine says this:
"An estimated 10,000 toxic exposures occur per year. These data indicate a gradual increase over the past 10 years." for the US.

The FDA banned lithium as a medication for many years due to its toxicity. Overdoses are a risk. Most MSDS sheets say something like this:

"Corrosive. Causes eye and skin burns. Water-reactive. Reacts violently and/or explosively with water, steam or moisture. May ignite or explode on contact with moist air. May cause severe respiratory tract irritation with possible burns. May cause severe digestive tract irritation with possible burns. May cause central nervous system effects. May cause lung damage. Light sensitive. May cause kidney damage. May cause pulmonary edema. "

As lithium carbonate it is only slightly safer.


On Apr 22 03:50 PM speculawyer wrote:

> Indeed, I think you hit on one of the most important points in your
> 'fourth' section. The amount of lithium in a lithium iron phosphate
> battery (the most promising Li-Ion battery for automotive applications)
> is relatively small. Less than 12% of a lithium iron phosphate battery
> is made up of lithium. The Iron, the phosphorous, and other less
> expensive materials make up the bulk of such batteries.
>
> Altaman, lithium is NOT highly toxic nor very expensive. In fact
> lithium is used as a medication for people with bi-polar disorder.
> Of course too much of any one thing, including water, can kill you.
> Lithium is NOT considered a highly toxic chemical.

Response to Jack Lifton's 'Lithium Batteries: Nothing But Illusion'

Lipton is right about one thing. Lithium is not abundant enough based on current economically recoverable reserves to supply a large automotive market. Lipton is correct in asserting that the Bolivian supply is overestimated, and since Bolivia clearly intends to nationalize its lithium reserves, the supply is hardly without its restrictions. Uyuni does have problems with both concentration and contaminants. I am a professional geologist who has visited Uyuni and Atacama salars to make a personal evaluation of the lithium reserves (note my name). Neither of you have touched on the environmental cost of these lithium supplies and that that may eventually place serious limits on supply (it already has in the US as I doubt anyone is going to allow mining the Great Salt Lake or the Salton Sea).

What neither of you seems to be explaining is that reserves are entirely based on economics. If lithium goes to the price of gold, there will be plenty of it available. However, I don't think many automotive applications will support a dramatically higher price for lithium. Lithium supply is currently expected to fall at least 30% below demand by at least one producer (Admiralty). The automotive market would likely destroy itself by creating more demand than the market can hope to supply.

Rather than debating and inferring definitions about reserves and resources, here is the AGI definition:
Reserves: Identified resources that can be extracted profitably with existing technology (my note: understand that as price goes up, so do reserves)
Resource: Reserves plus all other mineral deposits that may eventually become available.

There are plenty of lithium resources, since it is present in seawater. There are NOT plenty of reserves, since it can't be extracted from MOST resources profitably.

If any of you care to read a CURRENT resource/reserve estimate please read this (any 1992 estimates are based on seriously obsolete economics and are WRONG for that reason among others):
www.meridian-int-res.c...

Who Will Supply the Batteries for Plug-In Cars?

Exploration is unlikely to turn up much more lithium. Economics are the only thing that will change the reserves. Lithium brine deposits are the result of a very unique set of circumstances, which require something on the order of millions of years of consistently arid climate to concentrate them, along with a source of lithium that weathers from igneous rocks, and the Atacama desert, which is the driest place on earth, is one of the few environments where these conditions exist. To make matters worse, this area is a place of unique natural beauty with very unusual ecosystems and mining it for lithium would probably destroy it.

Lithium is recovered from ground water in these dry lake beds (salars) by pumping and drying in evaporation ponds. Rich areas contain about 4000 ppm of lithium in the brine, and the deposits are not consistent across the salar. There are lithium operations in Nevada (one small one) and three in China. North Carolina had a producer that mined spodumene instead of brine that ceased being economic in the 1980's. Australia has a spodumene mine that has a moderate sized deposit of lithium. Other possible reserves are in places like Russia and Zimbabwe. The Great Salt Lake (Utah) and the Salton Sea (California) are two possible reserves, but environmental standards are unlikely to allow these to be exploited.

The brine operators of South America have made the hard rock mine operators uneconomic (except where lithium is a by-product). If lithium prices were to rise an order of magnitude (not a few cents), some hard rock mines might come back. Recoverable reserves of the brine producers are probably no more than 1 million tonnes, while world reserves may be more like 4 million tonnes. You will see wildly larger numbers from some sources, but these are highly inaccurate. Currently to build 90,000 GM Volts, it requires about 2000 tonnes of battery grade lithium carbonate. That is the full annual production of battery grade lithium of one operator, Admiralty Resources (ADY). Lithium is also used in glass, ceramics, lubricants, and in specialty aircraft alloys, so batteries are not the only market.

All that said, for investors, lithium miners are probably a good bet going forward, as demand is going nowhere but up and supply is unlikely to increase dramatically if prices rise. Producers include SQM, FMC, ADY, Chemetalle, CITIC Guon MGL, Talison Minerals, Galaxy Resources, Bikita Minerals, Tanco, Avalon Ventures, and others. Just do your own due diligence, as mileage may vary due to the vagaries of the mining business.

Who Will Supply the Batteries for Plug-In Cars?

I love the way everyone promoting Lithium batteries ignores the obvious: there is not enough economically producible lithium in the world to meet any more than a small fraction of the amount needed for PHEV and EV vehicles! (I know, I'm a geologist who has visited the lithium production of Chile and Bolivia). The portable electronics sector is likely to absorb most of the planned production increases so there will be little available for the EV market.

I really don't give a #*%@ who supplies the batteries for electric cars. Who will supply the raw materials? It will take major changes in the price of lithium to make the less concentrated lithium sources economic for mining, and at that point, it is likely that the cars will also be uneconomic. If you can't grow it, you have to mine it and if you can't mine it, you can't build it.