[rsuelzer]

$5 of electricity is a near meaningless metric. The real question is how many kWh does the process require to get the 1kg of Lithium? Electricity prices vary widely, so I don't understand why they would use dollar figures, especially on an engineering site.

If we know how many kWh of electricity is used to get the Lithium, then we can compare that to how much energy the Lithium would be able to store and release over it's usable life. Some rough numbers in my head, the total weight of Lithium in the average 18650 battery is probably 25 grams (the other components being other metals like Cobalt).

This means that the 1kg of Lithium would be able to make about 40 or so 18650 batteries.

The average 18650 battery has an average watt hour capacity of 11 (a good one). So with 40 batteries you have 440wh of storage.

The average lifespan of the batteries would be about 1000 cycles... so 440kWh of capacity over the lifetime of the battery.

I will assume that the electricity rate they use for the $5 figure is a very cheap $0.10/kWh. Meaning that it would require 50kWh in the extraction process alone to extract enough lithium capable of storing 440kw over it's usable life.

I have no idea if this is a good return or not compared to how much energy is spent mining lithium.

[vitus]

Clicking through to the actual study:

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/EE/D1EE0...

"Based on these data, we estimated the total electricity required to enrich 1 kg lithium from seawater to 9000 ppm in five stages to be 76.34 kW h. Simultaneously, 0.87 kg H2 and 31.12 kg Cl2 were collected from the cathode and the anode, respectively. Taking the US electricity price of US$ 0.065 per kW h into consideration, the total electricity cost for this process is approximately US$ 5.0."

So, the electricity usage is even higher than you estimated, with an even lower cost per kWh. But that said, there are places in the US that have even cheaper electricity (especially if you're looking at industrial rates).

[Gibbon1]

To me, 76.34kwh per kg seems really bad. Tempered by, what do I know actually.

Here is an article describing electrowinning iron at 3.53kw/kg.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6918249/

[Johnny555]

$5 of electricity is a near meaningless metric.

It's not completely meaningless, as it gives a sense of the operating costs, and dollars are easily turned into electricity and vice-versa.

[justshowpost]

There is Arizona's $5 of electricity and there is Hawaii's $5 of electricity...

[Johnny555]

If you're building a seawater extraction plant in Arizona, the price of electricity is the least of your worries. (though admittedly Arizona has toyed with the idea of a desalination plant in the Sea of Cortez (so it'd be in Mexico), but they'd also have to build a power plant with it)

Likewise, if power is a significant part of your operating expenses, probably shouldn't run it in the state with the most expensive electrical costs.

Though my point was more that the actual power consumption in KWh isn't essential to know for figuring out if this process is viable, just a ball park price base on some average industrial power prices is good enough.

[sacred_numbers]

Your estimate is off by an order of magnitude. An 18650 cell with 11 watt hours of capacity would have about 0.9 grams of lithium. A kg of lithium could create around 12 KWh of batteries, which would store 12,000 KWh based on 1,000 cycles.

I don't know for sure, but based on current lithium prices I highly doubt that current lithium extraction processes use less than 50 KWh per kg. That's a really small amount of energy for such a useful material.

[CamperBob2]

Exactly. Even 1000 kWh/kg would still represent a single-digit percentage of the power that will eventually be handled by the product. Pretty neat when you think of it that way.

[Forge36]

Sounds like a good company to setup when electricity prices go negative. With an extra green energy push the extra power can go into creating lithium, which can go into batteries to increase the amount of usable power we can store.

Is this a good thing to due while reliant on coal? Probably not.

I wonder how many years until this is viable.