Quest to Mine Seawater for Lithium Advances [View all]

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http://www.technologyreview.com/news/538036/quest-to-mine-seawater-for-lithium-advances/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Quest to Mine Seawater for Lithium Advances[/font]

[font size=4]Predicted lithium shortages are leading to novel technologies for recovering the element, now found mostly in salt lakes in South America.[/font]

By Richard Martin on June 8, 2015

[font size=3]Researchers at Japan’s Atomic Energy Agency have come up with a new method of processing seawater to extract lithium—an element that plays a key role in advanced batteries for electric vehicles and one that, if current predictions for the EV market prove accurate, could be in short supply before the end of the decade.

Writing in the new issue of the journal Desalination, Tsuyoshi Hoshino, a scientist at the JAEA’s Rokkasho Fusion Institute, proposed a method for recovering lithium from seawater using dialysis. Still years from commercialization, the system is based on a dialysis cell with a membrane consisting of a superconductor material. Lithium is the only ion in the seawater that can pass through the membrane, from the negative-electrode side of the cell to the positive-electrode side.

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Predictions of lithium supply crunches have appeared with increasing frequency in recent years. Many analysts, though not all, believe that rising demand from makers of batteries for electric vehicles—particularly Tesla, whose forthcoming Gigafactory is expected to nearly double world lithium demand—is sure to strain supplies from traditional sources.

“I think we will see shortages,” says Simon Moores, head of the minerals and mining consultancy Benchmark Intelligence. “New supply is needed now, and it will be in the future, even if a fraction of the planned expansions in battery production happens.”

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