[HN Gopher] Scientists develop 'cheap and easy' method to extrac...
___________________________________________________________________
Scientists develop 'cheap and easy' method to extract lithium from
seawater
Author : sambeau
Score : 449 points
Date : 2021-06-06 08:20 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mining.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mining.com)
| Tade0 wrote:
| To put the amount of lithium in seawater in perspective:
|
| Just 2% of that would be enough to create storage capable of
| holding a year's worth of the world's electricity consumption.
| mac01021 wrote:
| 2% of what? All the lithium in the world's oceans?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| 2 % of 0.2 ppm of the entire ocean is helluva lot of stuff.
| On the order of a cubic kilometer in volume.
| jokoon wrote:
| I wonder, what's the cost of lithium in battery making?
|
| I've seen a video of how smartphone batteries are made, it's
| pretty advanced...
| Tade0 wrote:
| There's around 160-200g of lithium in 1 kWh of batteries,
| meanwhile lithium costs ~$13.50/kg, so in 1 kWh there's
| around $2.70 worth of lithium.
| jokoon wrote:
| My question was rather "does it really make batteries
| cheaper?".
| AYBABTME wrote:
| Did I get this right: the primary process is basically an LTO
| battery where salt-water sits behind the LTO's membrane, and when
| the battery is "charged", the Lithium ions are "sucked" into the
| battery-side's electrolyte by osmosis?
|
| Not a chemist so I'm just trying to see if I grokked it. If I
| did, then this is remarkably simple!
| kortex wrote:
| That's my read on it. It's kinda obvious when you frame it that
| way. Use a substrate which limits the ion size and apply an
| electric field.
| antattack wrote:
| It appears that this method is more profitable than mining
| Bitcoin if electricity cost is >.03/kWh and Lithium $10/kg.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Too bad you get any GPUs, guess electric car will have to wait.
| ck2 wrote:
| relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/678/
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Sounds similar to what EnergyX is doing:
| https://energyx.com/technology/#lithium-refinery
|
| They built technology to separate lithium from brine that has
| high concentrations of it. Their short term plan is to test this
| in Bolivia where lithium is currently being mined by evaporating
| water in basins (using the sun). This takes huge amounts of water
| and a lot of time. This would potentially be a lot more
| efficient. The same company is also working on solid state
| batteries.
|
| Doing the same with sea water would just require pumping a lot of
| water, I imagine. If you are desalinating that, you'd end up with
| a brine with relatively high concentrations of salt, lithium,
| etc. Same for hydrogen production. So, not the worst idea to do
| something productive with that brine (as opposed to dumping it
| back in the sea).
| orwin wrote:
| I really hope this is not something like the false joy i had when
| it was said we were able to remove ligogen from hardwood
| completely and that the carbon structure was almost as strong as
| steel. Three years later, i'm still waiting for it :/
| crubier wrote:
| You must be young, or only started reading about science in
| mainstream media recently.
|
| The kind of false joy you are talking about has been my
| constant pain for like 25years.
|
| You just have to understand that << scientific paper hyped up
| in mainstream media >> != << new technology entering the market
| >>.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Every now and then it happens. e-ink being the example I
| remember as a kid. It happened!
| tlb wrote:
| To extract 1 kg from 0.2 ppm seawater, you need to process 5e6 kg
| of water.
|
| $5 of electricity at $0.09/kWh is 200 MJ, which is enough to pump
| that much water 40 m high, or push it through a membrane with 4
| bar pressure drop.
|
| So you can't do very much to seawater at that price point. Like
| many "scientists develop cheap ___" headlines, it may just cover
| part of the process and not the whole operation.
| _Microft wrote:
| They discuss this on pages 3 to 5 of the paper if you want to
| read up on this. Here is an excerpt:
|
| _" Based on these data, we estimated the total electricity
| required to enrich 1 kg lithium from seawater to 9000 ppm in
| five stages to be 76.34 kWh. Simultaneously, 0.87 kg H_2 and
| 31.12 kg Cl_2 were collected from the cathode and the anode,
| respectively. Taking the US electricity price of US$ 0.065 per
| kWh into consideration, the total electricity cost for this
| process is approximately US$ 5.0. In addition, based on the
| 2020 prices of hydrogen and Cl_2 (i.e., US$ 2.5-8.0 per kg and
| US$ 0.15 per kg, respectively), the side-product value is
| approximately US$ 6.9-11.7, which can well compensate for the
| total energy cost. It should also be noted that the current
| Cl_2 utilisation capacity in the chlor-alkali industry is ~ 80
| Mtons/year. Even in the case where all the world lithium
| capacity is produced from our extraction process, the amount of
| Cl_2 produced will be 3 Mtons, and so will have very little
| effect on the total market"_, from
| https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2021/ee/d1ee00354...
| LB232323 wrote:
| So it's both efficient and the electricity cost is covered by
| the profitablity of the side products.
|
| Pretty amazing innovation, certainly a more sustainable
| solution than overthrowing the Bolivian government and
| murdering Native protestors.
|
| To think that an entire mineral mining industry could be
| replaced by processing seawater is revolutionary.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Do you remember this guy, Kanzius, who showed that you can
| burn saltwater when pumping it with radio waves? Yet, the
| citation trail seems dead because scientists assumed that
| he was a crank claiming he got more power out than he put
| in. No, he just demonstrated a really neat approach to
| electrodeless hydrolysis.
|
| https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a2840/4271398/#:~:
| t....
| qayxc wrote:
| If by "neat" you mean "inefficient", then yes.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| By neat I mean "holy shit, the salt water is literally on
| fire"
| carapace wrote:
| http://www.rexresearch.com/kanzius/kanzius.htm Some news
| articles and patents.
|
| (Rex Research is mostly crackpottery. But not all of it.
| The tricky bit is sorting the horse from the horseshit,
| eh?)
| pontifier wrote:
| The RF probably just turns the glass into a capacitor
| plate. The AC nature of RF helps to deal with the fact
| that glass is a poor conductor, so a DC field couldn't
| create much gas before the surface saturated with charge.
|
| This should work without the RF stage using electrodes
| coated with glass, and using AC to drive it at high
| frequency.
| _Microft wrote:
| The article contains a broken link to the paper but I
| think I found it on Sci Hub. It's short by the way, just
| three or four pages of own content:
|
| https://sci-hub.do/10.1179/143307508/270875
|
| Edit: it's a bit of a strange paper with a lot of talk
| about unrelated things (imo) but there seems to be this
| unexpected effect which might make it worthwhile to
| investigate it independently from what one thinks of this
| paper. The setup seems to be simple and cheap enough that
| there should not be huge obstacles to get easy and fast
| results.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Personally, I read it as "mostly unmodelled, difficult to
| calculate experiment behaves in a way no scientist ever
| predicted, but not very far from what simpler ones do".
|
| If I was looking for something to research, I wouldn't
| pick this one. It's not strange enough to compensate for
| how hard it is to understand it. (But then, I wonder how
| I the photoelectric emission fits on that dimension...)
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| If I understand, you are saying you wouldn't try to
| empirically research this because 1. burning salt water
| isn't strange enough and 2. it would be difficult to
| calculate and model.
|
| That seems reasonable and yet unfortunate. It seems like
| the kind of experiment that a scientist would try to
| undertake out of sheer curiosity.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Thanks for the edit. I view this all through the lens of
| the politics of science. Some radio technician figures
| out a really unexpected natural effect, it gets major
| news coverage by a scientifically illiterate press
| (claiming free energy), and the scientific mainstream
| pounce: "how foolish they were to think that energy could
| be extracted from water!" And yet (and this is the thing
| that makes me jump up and down), we still have a really
| unexpected property of nature! Study that shit, people! I
| might be wrong, but it seems that the reason the topic
| isn't studied--even to _measure the inefficiency_ --is
| due to some unhealthy politics in modern science.
|
| I expect it will first be studied by YouTubers like "the
| plasma channel".
| gus_massa wrote:
| > _Study that shit, people!_
|
| From a practical point of view, It looks like an
| interesting demo, but I don't think it has too many
| applications. I only can imagine that it may be useful as
| a sterilization process, whatever virus or bacteria that
| is in the solution will be extremely unhappy with so much
| H2 and O2 around. The flame and the small risk of an
| explosion is a problem.
|
| From a theoretical point of view, it's easy to model
| isolated small molecules. Big molecules or combination of
| molecules is exponentially more difficult, like in
| ~exp(5*N) where N is the number of atoms and 5 is an
| oversimplification. There are some approximations that
| reduce it to a polynomial time like ~(5N)^12 or ~(5N)^9
| less if you use more approximations. And with more
| approximations you can calculate it in linear time that
| is very useful for biochemistry that are interested in
| big molecules. Anyway, most of these methods assume that
| atoms don't move, or don't move too much, or use a lot of
| simplifications.
|
| Simulation water at the molecular level is a nightmare.
| You need to simulate many molecules, each one moving
| around, that form bounds between them that are not stable
| enough to simulate like a fixed length, but stable enough
| to be ignored. And now you need to add a strong
| electromagnetic field to the mix, and the nightmare is
| upgraded to the Freddy Krueger level.
| _Microft wrote:
| There seem to be a lot of low hanging fruits to
| characterize the phenomenon, so I would not try to
| simulate the process yet. Dependence of the amount of
| produced gases on the concentration and type of salt, the
| temperature, radio frequency, input power seem very easy
| to check if the necessary equipment is available. Pick a
| few parameters and hand the task over to a
| bachelor/master student or maybe research assistant and
| see what results come out.
|
| _" Effects of different parameters on the efficiency of
| electrode-less water splitting"_, sounds like an
| acceptable topic for a bachelor thesis for example ;)
| gus_massa wrote:
| I agree, there are many interesting variables
| (temperature, concentration, frequency, shape of the
| container, localization of the beam, ...), and
| impurities/catalyzers open another huge amount of
| tweaking opportunities.
|
| It's just that most papers pretend that the result has
| some practical or theoretical application, and I think
| it's difficult to get one.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| But isn't that challenge of simulation exactly why
| empirical study would be valuable?
|
| I'd want to know how the Hydrolysis effect varies as a
| function of EM frequency and salt composition.
| Hypothetically, different EM frequencies could produce
| resonance effects in water. Basically, I'm curious how
| the flame might grow bigger at different EM frequencies.
|
| If anyone has any access to EM equipment like this, I'd
| definitely pay $1000 to catalyze. Seriously! I haven't
| been this curious about a physics phenomena since I
| learned about sonoluminescent bubble implosions
| "Mysterious Glowing Bubbles". Seriously.
| https://www.newswise.com/articles/mysterious-glowing-
| bubbles
|
| RIP Dr. Apfel, he was a big influence on me.
|
| I know Alan McGaughey at CMU does water modeling at a
| molecular level, pretty cool stuff: https://scholar.googl
| e.com/citations?user=HmNtygkAAAAJ&hl=en
| nabla9 wrote:
| In other words lithium from the seawater adds 0.5% into the
| battery price.
|
| (Assuming lithium battery cost is USD 100/kWh and 100 g of
| Lithium metal (not LCE) per kWh)
| einpoklum wrote:
| IIAN, 5,000 tons of water is 5,000 cubic meters' worth, right?
|
| Wouldn't this process also quickly reduce the local
| concentration of Lithium in the water surrounding the
| processing station? Making sustained operations difficult?
| heartbreak wrote:
| We could repurpose offshore oil rigs.
| einpoklum wrote:
| It's still not clear that the mixing will be faster than
| the flow through the Lithium extractor, if that extractor
| needs 5000 m^3 / Kg of output, and wants to get to, oh,
| 1000 Kg / day.
| bigfudge wrote:
| The sea is big, pipes can be long
| nkrisc wrote:
| In 1891 Chicago built a water intake four miles offshore in
| Lake Michigan, with pipes under the lakebed. I bet we could
| do a lot better than that, over 100 years later.
|
| Likewise between the tide and currents you might have
| sufficient mixing if new seawater.
| einpoklum wrote:
| If I'm in a bay, maybe not so much.
|
| Anyway, like you said - "maybe".
| nkrisc wrote:
| Yeah I'm sure every location is totally unique in terms
| of currents and such, and would have to be investigated
| individually at any proposed site.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| If you can piggyback on desalinization of water, some of this
| process becomes 'free'.
|
| I wonder if we are wasting valuable brine as part of our
| established desalinization processes?
| muyuu wrote:
| whoa I was making the exact same point simultaneously in a
| sibling comment
| redsummer wrote:
| Isn't Lithium an anti-depressant? If it's extracted from
| drinking water, won't you end up with miserable people?
| beowulfey wrote:
| OP you replied to was saying the remnant waste brine from
| desalination may contain valuable lithium.
| swader999 wrote:
| Just pirates and fisherman would be affected but they are
| salty to begin with.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| No we're not, you bloody idiot!
|
| _Returns to mending nets and counting seagulls._
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| No, lithium is a mood stabilizer. It is mainly used to
| treat manic episodes in bipolar disorders and is not a
| particularly effective treatment for major depression.
|
| I doubt drinking water contains anything close to
| therapeutic doses of lithium.
| ncmncm wrote:
| They include selling the H and Cl gases also produced to
| bring the net cost down to $5.
| 542458 wrote:
| The electricity cost is ~$5, the sale of H and Cl2 is
| separate from that. Pages 3-5 of the paper.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| It'd be cool if they could combine this with extraction of
| Uranium 235 for a more sustainable source of nuclear fuel.
|
| EDIT: For more context, nuclear power could be a great tool
| in reducing carbon emissions. I read somewhere that mining
| Uranium 235 from seawater at scale would cost roughy 2x to
| 3x what it costs to get the fuel from the ground at today's
| prices. I was trying to say that if we're going through all
| of the trouble to extract Lithium from seawater, it'd be
| cool if extracting Uranium at the same time made both
| processes more economical.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| ?
| _Microft wrote:
| Seawater contains uranium among other things:
|
| _" Seawater contains about 3.3 parts per billion of
| uranium by weight, approximately (3.3 ug/kg) or, 3.3
| micrograms per liter of seawater.[6] The extraction of
| uranium from seawater has been considered as a means of
| obtaining the element."_, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/Uranium_in_the_environment#Nat...
|
| (Mining uranium is as environmentally unfriendly as other
| mining operations, just do a web search for "uranium
| mining".)
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Of course, there's precious metals and rare-earth
| elements in there too, but are they economically-viable
| to process?
|
| Yes, I know all about the externalities of uranium mining
| as a portion of my extended family who lived in a
| particular house around the Four Corners/Durango area all
| died within a matter of years from horrible cancers due
| to contaminated drinking water.
|
| https://www.ewg.org/research/170-million-us-drink-
| radioactiv...
| gus_massa wrote:
| The trick here is to use a ceramic filter that have holes
| that are so small that only Lithium can pass through.
|
| Actually the only "molecules" smaller than Lithium are
| Hydrogen and Helium. Helium is not a problem because it's
| too easy to pull apart and Hydrogen (H+ and H2) are not
| problem because H2 is another of the products.
|
| (Actually^2 H+ is not isolated, it's combined with water
| in H3O+, but I guess the holes need some room for the
| water around the Li+ ions. The technical details are
| probably more complicated, but "small holes only allow H,
| He and Li to pass" is a good approximation.)
|
| But Uranium atoms are huge. They are bigger than most
| atoms, and I'm not sure if the common form in seawater is
| a combination of Uranium and Oxygen. A hole that big will
| allow most mineral to pass, so you will just get brine.
| Using it in the other direction with holes just smaller
| than Uranium is also not very useful, because you will
| get Uranium mixed with a lot of crap, many of the
| contamination are not isolated atoms (that are mostly
| smaller) but molecules that combine a few atoms are are
| bigger.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > But Uranium atoms are huge.
|
| And heavy. Some gravitational fractionation should do it.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Centrifuges, even, typically.
| muyuu wrote:
| that would be a non-issue in existing desalination plants
|
| sounds promising but papers tend to overpromise, so we'll see
| if it's viable - cheap and abundant lithium batteries would be
| a major breakthrough for renewables
| jokoon wrote:
| It would be a breakthrough for vehicles, but not necessarily
| for the electrical network.
|
| Batteries still have a lifespan, their manufacture emits CO2,
| and they need to be disposable or to be recycled.
|
| Nuclear is still the best energy in terms of carbon.
| Retric wrote:
| The manufacturing process indirectly produces CO2 in the
| same way the staff driving to a nuclear power plant
| produces CO2. Aka it's all indirect and could be replaced
| with EV and clean energy.
|
| Nuclear is a non starter from a cost perspective at this
| point. You get vastly more bang for the buck subsidizing
| battery backed up wind / solar which can actually load
| follow without becoming even more expensive.
| jokoon wrote:
| > indirectly produces CO2 in the same way the staff
| driving to a nuclear power plant
|
| The same way? Mining, processing, shipping, etc... There
| is a difference between "the same way" and an actual
| carbon accounting.
|
| Money doesn't matter, only carbon matters. Nuclear is a
| long term investment, it doesn't mean it's more
| expensive.
| Retric wrote:
| First, Nuclear is more than 10c/kWh unsubsidized at 90%
| capacity factor, which only gets worse as you try and
| scale up. France got into the 70% range and they had
| countries to export to. Nuclear is not even vaguely
| competitive even without energy storage involved. Just
| the fuel rod lifecycle alone costs almost as much per kWh
| as solar. 24/7/365 security is only the tip of the
| iceberg when you look into why Nuclear is so stupidly
| expensive. Maintenance for example takes up roughly 1
| month per year of operation and you can't send the guards
| home.
|
| Anyway, it's the same in that their all indirectly
| producing CO2. In a full accounting all of those things
| that make nuclear expensive actually produce CO2 because
| construction equipment, mining to produce the parts to
| build a reactor, etc etc all produce CO2 in the current
| economy.
|
| In fact if you do the full breakdown for all activities
| related to Nuclear Reactor Construction, Operation, and
| Decommissioning their a very significant CO2 source in
| large part because all economic activity is and their
| really expensive. Regardless of how easy to draw
| arbitrary lines that ignore say CO2 emissions from
| workers daily commutes etc.
|
| The only way to move past that is to have serious energy
| storage that's used for all equipment and thus very
| widespread adoption of cheap battery technology. At which
| point Nuclear costs become an even larger issue because
| cheap batteries tank the cost of battery backed up
| wind/solar. In the end far northern countries can make
| some use of Nuclear, but it's a dead end technology
| without a significant role in actually solving climate
| change.
| ENIanDEM wrote:
| Some pretty wild unsourced claims masquerading as facts.
|
| As with pretty much any energy source, (including wind,
| solar, gas..) nuclear tends to get cheaper the more you
| build. You can look up FOAK vs NOAK and note the curves.
| Not sure what you're referring to re difficulty of
| increasing %share?
|
| How are you measuring "fuel rod lifecycle"? And how does
| that possibly comparable to "$/kWh solar"?
|
| Here's [0] a good source for some facts. You should note
| that accounting for the whole lifecycle of
| mining/processing/operating/defueling/decommissioning,
| nuclear is ~1/4 of the emissions of solar. And this is
| only considering electricity; we still have 2-3x the kwh
| to source for our heating requirements. You're suggesting
| we get that all sorted with solar & wind too?
|
| 0 - https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-
| and-the...
| endymi0n wrote:
| While still significant, the impact of lithium cost on
| battery cost is commonly far overestimated:
|
| "A 50% increase in lithium prices would for instance increase
| the battery pack price of a nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) 811
| battery by less than 4%." [1]
|
| Nevertheless, together with improvements in (low-cobalt)
| battery chemistry, this sounds like an important piece of the
| puzzle.
|
| [1] https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-
| ion-b...
| tootie wrote:
| I'm assuming there's other advantages in terms of supply
| chain. We can put saltwater lithium extractors anywhere and
| have them be mostly automated. I don't know much about
| conventional lithium extraction but mining anything tends
| to be dirty business for both workers and the environment.
| jokoon wrote:
| If you plug yourself to nearby nuclear plant, I guess it's
| possible to make electricity much cheaper, as long as you can
| plan your energy consumption.
| XorNot wrote:
| There's no real need though with this: anything where the
| product is not on-demand electrical power can and should be
| able to be run off of intermittent solar or wind power.
|
| Amortized over a year, letting the plant shut down because
| it's cloudy a few days should be fine.
| fridif wrote:
| The idea is that when the cheap lithium is no longer available,
| this becomes the only viable alternative.
|
| I remember in 2005 my earth science teacher told me "shale in
| north dakota will never be viable with all this saudi oil lying
| around"
| hypnoscripto wrote:
| How does this compare to current prices?
| venkaesh wrote:
| Head start
| belter wrote:
| I am not sure, but sadly, it seems the reduction in carbon
| footprint from EVs is nullified by the expanded carbon emissions
| from lithium mining: http://blog.gorozen.com/blog/exploring-
| lithium-ion-electric-...
| belter wrote:
| It seems many of you do not agree, so please give me the
| benefit of the doubt and review some data points:
|
| "Effects of battery manufacturing on electric vehicle life-
| cycle greenhouse gas emissions"
| https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EV-life...
|
| "Analysis of the climate impact of lithium-ion batteries and
| how to measure it"
| https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publicat...
|
| "Climate explained: the environmental footprint of electric
| versus fossil cars" https://theconversation.com/climate-
| explained-the-environmen...
| philipkglass wrote:
| Two of these citations undermine your original claim that
| "the reduction in carbon footprint from EVs is nullified by
| the expanded carbon emissions from lithium mining."
|
| https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-the-
| environmen...
|
| says
|
| _So on the basis of recent studies, fossil-fueled cars
| generally emit more than electric cars in all phases of a
| life cycle._
|
| and https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publi
| cat...
|
| says
|
| _Overall, electric vehicles typically have much lower life-
| cycle greenhouse gas emissions than a typical car in Europe,
| even when assuming relatively high battery manufacturing
| emissions._
|
| The first link does not appear to directly compare internal
| combustion vehicles against battery electric vehicles.
| tw04 wrote:
| They/you lose me out of the gate:
|
| > An entry-level Honda Civic, which we believe is a more
| appropriate comparison, would improve the ICE fuel efficiency
| by 20%.
|
| Someone shopping for a Tesla model 3 isn't also in the market
| for a base-model civic. The primary market they've been eating
| is bmw and Audi. And the author _has_ to know that because it's
| published monthly and he's at least pretending to have done
| some research.
|
| When you link to a blog making obvious bad-faith assumptions,
| the rest of the message is rather irrelevant and people are
| going to let you know.
| belter wrote:
| I would like that EVs would prove to be solution to carbon
| footprint reduction.
|
| Its just that with information I looked at so far, for ex.
| the fact batteries do not seem to last more than 130,000 Km
| and the expansion of lithium mining it looks like the jury is
| still out of EVs really are helping reducing overall carbon
| footprint. If you look at some of the studies you will seen
| depending on the data there a reduction only of 10% maybe 15%
| and according to other sources its basically flat. I would
| love to be proven wrong, as clearly we are facing a climate
| change emergency.Plus hydrogen as a solution does not seem to
| be around the corner. Producing hydrogen also has its
| challenges.
| Zenst wrote:
| "This means that the value of hydrogen and chlorine produced by
| the cell would end up offsetting the cost of power, and residual
| seawater could also be used in desalination plants to provide
| freshwater."
|
| Yes if you run electrodes in water you get Oxygen and Hydrogen at
| the respective electrodes. Add salt as you get in seawater and
| you get Hydrogen and Chlorine.
|
| Is the demand for Chlorine that high?
|
| [EDIT ADD] YES, it is and thank you for the replies, the epoxy
| one I had no idea (never even thought about it even).
| flying_kiwi wrote:
| Yes. Chlorine is used in many industrial processes and as a
| base material for a lot of things, including PVC plastic.
| _Microft wrote:
| The global demand for chlorine is 25-30 times as high as the
| amount of chlorine they would expect to produce when replacing
| all current lithium production with their process.
| imtringued wrote:
| You need chlorine to produce epoxy so yes it's pretty high.
| Animats wrote:
| They're still at the bench-top stage with this, from the
| pictures. This is something that ought to work, since lithium is
| commercially extracted from denser brines.[1] Extraction from
| seawater is quite possible but not yet cost-effective. So cost is
| the big question. This is the usual problem when articles
| announcing "cheap and easy" come from the surface-chemistry
| crowd.
|
| The authors write "a preliminary economic analysis shows that the
| process can be made profitable when coupled with the chlor-alkali
| industry." So they apparently want to run this off of the reject
| stream from a plant that extracts chlorine and sodium hydroxide
| from brine. Running this downstream of a chlor-alkali plant means
| somebody else already has a brine source and a way to get rid of
| all the rejected brine. This sort of thing is common. A lot of
| rare mineral extraction is done as part of a process that
| extracts a less-rare mineral.
|
| Profitability is going to turn on all the usual problems with
| membrane systems - how long does the membrane last, how often
| does it have to be backwashed, what parts in the system corrode,
| and similar routine engineering problems. That's usually the hard
| part.
|
| [1] https://www.samcotech.com/is-it-possible-to-extract-
| lithium-...
| dsomers wrote:
| But won't this make the fish sad?!
| sidm83 wrote:
| This need more upvotes lol
| Sabinus wrote:
| Please don't. I like that this place isn't reddit.
| Yajirobe wrote:
| But you people visit Reddit as well. Is this your alter ego
| on HN? Why not behave the same way you do in other
| communities, why put on a mask for the HN folks?
| jamestnz wrote:
| > Is this your alter ego on HN?
|
| Come now, let's not be obtuse. People naturally behave
| differently in different social contexts, a thing that is
| totally normal and expected.
|
| For instance, consider how you'd behave in a professional
| situation, vs when drinking with your friends, vs when
| catching up with your grandmother.
|
| Having different standards in different online
| communities seems no different.
| Yajirobe wrote:
| The differences between a professional situation/drinking
| with friends/talking with grandmother are way too big
| compared to the differences between HN and Reddit. The
| latter two are actually extremely similar in how content
| gets posted and discussed.
|
| In other words, there appears to be no reason why HN and
| Reddit folks should behave differently when on the
| opposite platform. These behavior differences are
| artificial and ad hoc (i.e. 'we want to keep HN free from
| obtuse memes.. because we said so!')
| tw04 wrote:
| > In other words, there appears to be no reason why HN
| and Reddit folks should behave differently when on the
| opposite platform.
|
| The site rules would be a pretty obvious reason why
| people should and do act differently here vs Reddit.
| jamestnz wrote:
| You don't accept that different online communities can
| have sufficiently different cultures that "memes" are
| more acceptable in one than the other, even if said
| communities have somewhat of an overlap in audiences?
| nexuist wrote:
| I'll give you an unrelated example - I watch lots of
| developer conference presentations and read articles on
| developer blogs. My pet peeve is when writers include
| reaction GIFs in between some code example or one-
| sentence epiphany. I'm here to learn, not to waste
| bandwidth on some dumb five frame 80MB file. GIFs are for
| casual "throw-away" conversations, not learning
| resources.
|
| I like that HN is a learning resource. I like that I can
| read perspectives from people in many different fields
| and across the various economic classes. I also like
| reddit - I like the memes, the in-group culture (when
| it's funny), the bots, the one-liners, what have you. But
| I don't want humor and generalizations to dominate HN
| comments; I want educational content to float to the top
| so that authors are rewarded for sharing their
| perspective. I can find funny takes on HN headlines on
| reddit already.
| lolsal wrote:
| The point is that HN and Reddit are not extremely
| similar. This is more like a work place (more rules, more
| interesting), reddit is more like 8th grade recess (less
| rules, more fun)
| belter wrote:
| I think its about keeping one place for meaningful
| discussion and other for meme creation.
| wruza wrote:
| _you people visit Reddit as well_
|
| That's a generalization, not everyone visits reddit.
| henvic wrote:
| Poor eels.
| amai wrote:
| See also New patented process to enable lithium extraction from
| geothermal in Germany: https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/new-
| patented-process-to-enabl...
| plankers wrote:
| Soon: a global reduction of lithium levels in seawater makes fish
| more aggressive.
| billiam wrote:
| It's a big deal, if just to provide a signal that lithium supply
| can be distributed in the future and mineralized, concentrated,
| and potentially politicized sources won't dominate. The biggest
| effect might be to chill R&D on alternative chemistries to
| lithium for motorized transport batteries as well as lithium
| recycling research.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| A really cool example of lithium from seawater is underway on the
| Salton Sea using geothermal plants. The water in the Salton Sea
| is incredible high in lithium and there's enough there to supply
| the demand for US EVs.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/04/28/990867075/californias-white-g...
|
| I believe there's a few startups rushing to get there first.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I think this is a far better idea. This is the first time I'm
| hearing about this.
| hourislate wrote:
| The Japanese seem to have a head start on this process. Article
| from 2016.
|
| https://www.miningweekly.com/article/over-40-minerals-and-me...
|
| _Last year, researchers at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency's
| Rokkasho Fusion Institute revealed that they had developed a new
| way of extracting lithium from seawater. This involves dialysis.
| It employs a dialysis cell containing a membrane made from a
| superconducting material. Lithium is the only ion in the seawater
| that can pass through the membrane. It moves from the negative
| electrode side of the cell to the positive electrode side. They
| reported that the system displayed good energy efficiency and
| that it would be easy to scale it up. However, they also
| cautioned that the process is years away from being
| commercialized._
| dtgriscom wrote:
| We're nowhere near materials that superconduct above water's
| freezing point (even salt water); how could this work?
| _Microft wrote:
| The answer seems to be that it is a misnomer or at least bad
| choice of name. They talk about _(lithium) ionic
| superconductors_ at each occurence of the term
| _superconductor_ which makes me think that they actually mean
| materials that only let lithium ions through but not others
| (because this is how their device actually works).
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001191641.
| .. (Open Access)
| hourislate wrote:
| There are many criteria by which superconductors are
| classified.
|
| Superconductor material classes include chemical elements
| (e.g. mercury or lead), alloys (such as niobium-titanium,
| germanium-niobium, and niobium nitride), ceramics (YBCO and
| magnesium diboride), superconducting pnictides (like
| fluorine-doped LaOFeAs) or organic superconductors
| (fullerenes and carbon nanotubes; though perhaps these
| examples should be included among the chemical elements, as
| they are composed entirely of carbon).[12][13]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity
| rmason wrote:
| In Michigan there is a special class of mining known as injection
| wells where they force water into wells and extract either salt
| or potassium fertilizer. Makes me wonder if they could extract
| lithium as a byproduct of this process?
| orwin wrote:
| Its hard to say as the process is not described well. It seems
| to be, but i know that this kind of article is obscure on
| purpose to let readers imagine all kind of applications.
| swader999 wrote:
| This is being attempted with lithium as well:
| https://financialpost.com/commodities/mining/meet-the-compan...
| cronix wrote:
| I just wonder if any creature depends on the lithium levels being
| what they currently are to survive. It seems we're great at
| discovering X but at the expense of the unknown Y and by the time
| we discover the problem in Y, it's too late to fix it. And now we
| have also have a problem with Z caused by Y.
| whiddershins wrote:
| In other comment above, quick math shows the scale of this
| concern ends up being completely off.
|
| The oceans are just so much bigger than we can easily
| conceptualize. So very much bigger.
| cronix wrote:
| > The oceans are just so much bigger than we can easily
| conceptualize. So very much bigger.
|
| Yes, so big in fact that at one time we didn't think that
| little 'ol mankind could alter it, just like the rest of the
| planet. What does raising the ocean temp by a measly 1-2
| degrees do to thousands of different plants and animals in
| the sea? Did we know that 100 years ago? These very large
| complex systems aren't as immune to small changes as we once
| thought and often cascade into other systems.
| whiddershins wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27412684
| odyssey7 wrote:
| Does somebody know the environmental impact of this? Would the
| lithium concentration in seawater become meaningfully lower, and
| if so have we verified that organisms aren't dependent on it?
| amelius wrote:
| The solution is simple: just dump used batteries back into the
| ocean :)
|
| Just kidding, of course.
| Forbo wrote:
| Oddly enough, there's a meme about this (although it's lead-
| acid rather than lithium)...
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/throwing-car-batteries-
| into-t...
| NilsIRL wrote:
| Keep in mind that that is not the only possible environmental
| impact. In order to extract such large volumes of water,
| ecosystems may be damaged.
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| No. Damage from extracting 'large volumes' is insignificant.
| (waste is another issue)
|
| You are completely off scale. The oceans contain 1.34e+21 L.
| Humanity uses 1.38e+17J annually. If we take ~10J to move 1Kg
| 1m up. That means if we spend all our energy on moving sea
| water, we can move 0.00001% of the ocean up by 1 meter per
| year.
|
| Any novel ecosystem is close to shore, from those ecosystems
| most are already damaged by other means.
| NilsIRL wrote:
| Animals clogging up nuclear power plants is a common
| occurance[1][2][3].
|
| [1]:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-21/french-
| nu...
|
| [2]:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/01/jellyfish-
| clog...
|
| [3]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-
| news/hinkley-poin...
| jpalomaki wrote:
| Two snippets from the Google search for scale:
|
| "The world's oceans contain an estimated 180 billion tons of
| lithium"
|
| "Lithium mines produced an estimated global total of 82,000
| metric tons of lithium in 2020"
| amelius wrote:
| So even after 100 years of extraction, the effect would still
| be less than 0.005%.
| lolsal wrote:
| We don't have a good idea of how this new method will
| scale, or how demand will scale once this cheaper method
| gets going. It's hard to speculate accurately I think.
| mot0rola wrote:
| Had the same thought, are there repercussions?
| yuvalr1 wrote:
| What would the sea corals say about us taking their lithium away?
|
| Do they even like lithium? Maybe we're doing them a favor.
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| This is amazing development taking in consideration how
| devastating classic lithium mining can be for surrounding nature.
| https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environmen...
|
| At the same time by this method lithium it can become available
| almost for all countries on the planet (minus 45 that do not have
| sea).
| clcaev wrote:
| If only the price if lithium mined in these ways included the a
| tax for these environmental externalities.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The actual footprint of lithium mining is absolutely tiny
| compared to pretty much any other metal in demand. Iron,
| copper, and aluminum mining have left giant gaping scars in the
| earth that are thousands of times larger than anything anyone
| has even proposed doing for lithium. And that's before we start
| to talk about surface coal mining, tar sands, and all the land
| that's been scraped flat for oil and gas exploration and
| production. Get some perspective on this by getting out of your
| house and looking around. Those photos in the article that are
| intended to shock me would amount to a single medium-scale
| table salt evaporation facility.
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| That looks like a fallacy reasoning. In the same way if we
| would compare any harm that is happening on our planet to let
| say: Solar system, galaxy or universe, combined with age of a
| star, so it would be negligible and therefore justifiable?
|
| Collateral damage is justifiable unless you are not that
| damage isn't it?
|
| Better reasoning could begin with the question: would I leave
| my comfortable home, go there, and live there in community
| where water is contaminated by lithium mining sludge. Would I
| drink that water every day? Is there anyone who is suffering
| so I could enjoy comfortable life?
| jeffbee wrote:
| I'm not suggesting that you should move to a salt flat in
| Bolivia where nobody lives, no, nor am I suggesting that
| you move to an acidic retaining pond at an old copper mine
| in Shasta County, California. What I am suggesting is that
| there are already way, _way_ more people suffering from
| global consumption of gold, copper, lead, nickel, iron,
| cadmium, and other metals than are or will potentially
| suffer from lithium mining.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I remember reading a story like this a few years ago. I think, in
| that case, it was about rare earth minerals.
|
| Don't get me wrong; I really want this to work, but until the
| extraction plant gets built and is producing at scale, I won't
| hold my breath.
| mongol wrote:
| Could this be done far away at sea, perhaps close to oil and gas
| platforms?
| mattmaroon wrote:
| I can already see the 2050 headlines: fish populations rapidly
| depleting from lithium deprivation.
| xbar wrote:
| Nice! You predict fish remain in 2050!
| williesleg wrote:
| Another way to kill the oceans. So pissed china pumps tons of
| crap there, and their massive ships with all that fossil fuels
| putting their emissions into the oceans, killing the reefs. Now
| we steal the oceans lithium. Wtf you people, all loving to kill
| the oceans. Stop it now.
| nimbius wrote:
| From the perspective of a diesel engine tech, this is a
| controversial opinion, but I'm absolutely glad to see this
| breakthrough.
|
| Lithium is a conflict resource. its scarce, its hard to mine, and
| as a result so far electric cars are a fanciful plaything for
| what i would consider "the rich." This paves the way for electric
| cars that a working class mom and dad can afford to get to and
| from work and the store. and of course electric trucks that have
| obscene amounts of torque means never "getting stuck" behind a
| slow truck ever again. it also means cleaner cities and hopefully
| cheaper trucking for over the road drivers and owner/operators.
|
| Ive told my coworkers and apprentices this for as long as i can
| remember: expect to service elecric long-haul trucks in your
| lifetime. Learn the powertrain, the dynamics, the performance
| characteristics and keep pace with the technology as it evolves.
| Make it part of your expectation in the future, because the
| economic model of diesel is a last-ditch effort at best in the
| 21st century.
| coding123 wrote:
| Just throwing this out there, but a lot of working class
| contractor type drive a RAM/Ford/Chevy 1 ton class diesel
| trucks with mega cab that typically runs in the neighborhood of
| 50-70k, so these people WILL transition to electric. I already
| know republican types in rural areas that even want to get the
| Cybertruck (even if it means looking like one of those rich
| types).
| nszceta wrote:
| My 3/4 ton gas pickup truck gets 8 miles per gallon towing 12
| thousand pounds hundreds of miles a month. I blow through
| multiple Teslas worth of energy per drive. No way is this
| thing going to be replaced by anything even remotely
| resembling the lithium ion batteries of today. And even if
| such a magical thing existed, I would need to charge it
| somewhere at over 100 amps to be useful.
|
| We need more nuclear power plants sequestering atmosphere
| carbon dioxide into liquid fuels. My job sites in rural
| counties lose power regularly in sunny calm wind conditions.
| I would be utterly helpless and stuck regularly if my vehicle
| strongly depended on the electrical grid.
|
| Liquid fuels carry so much energy per liter I can store a
| massive amount of energy in a compact package. This is more
| important to me than pulling a 55 foot semi trailer filled to
| the brim with 18650s to have enough energy to tow. I cringe
| at the cost of lithium ion batteries to meet my energy
| requirements. God forbid those batteries freeze! Now my
| precious expensive batteries are destroyed.
|
| We will see electric trucks in the near future on a very
| small subset of routes where reliable electrical connectivity
| is available.
| buu700 wrote:
| I was thinking about this recently. If we had an efficient
| way to sequester atmospheric carbon at scale, particularly
| if it could be done in such a way that it was backwards
| compatible with existing gasoline and/or diesel engines
| (perhaps in a formulation with biofuels and/or other
| sustainably sourced fuels), wouldn't it be preferable to
| roll that out "overnight" rather than rely on replacing the
| majority of existing cars with electric alternatives? Maybe
| there would still be room for both if gas and electric have
| properties that are nice for different use cases, but at
| least you wouldn't have to significantly prefer one over
| the other for environmental reasons.
|
| Further, wouldn't this essentially solve the storage
| problem with renewables? If the tech were easily scalable /
| didn't rely on any scare materials, it would essentially be
| a type of battery that could be used in combination with
| existing fossil fuel plants (and nuclear of course) for
| baseline load.
|
| Which, now that I think about it, would actually make any
| kind of green new deal much more politically viable. If the
| fossil fuel plants and gas stations get to keep running,
| it's that much fewer jobs we're axing and hoping to replace
| with better alternatives.
| cwxm wrote:
| https://prometheusfuels.com/
| s0rce wrote:
| The vast majority of non-commercial truck use is not towing
| or hauling. Just look at the pickups you see on the road.
| Most are just luxury vehicles at this point. Not much
| difference than a slightly more practical sportscar.
| syshum wrote:
| I would love for you cite your sources on this...
|
| For Ford, the most popular Truck, 50-60% of Trucks are
| F150 XL, or XLT, the XL is the base work truck, the XLT
| as the common features but not level of luxury of the
| Lariat, or Platinum Trucks.
| s0rce wrote:
| Was just my observation on the road in the Western USA. I
| think the stats you have include fleet and commercial
| which frequently buy the base models, I was just talking
| about non-commercial use.
| jwolfe wrote:
| > I already know republican types in rural areas that even
| want to get the Cybertruck (even if it means looking like one
| of those rich types).
|
| Not entirely on topic, but I'm curious whether their interest
| will shift to the electric Ford truck.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I think the Ford electric F150 will sell like mad if it's
| reliable. Modern gas and diesel trucks are kinda a
| mechanical nightmare at this point. Used to be they were
| simpler than cars. Easy to work on. Now they are as
| complex. And as hard to work on as vans, of not more so.
| Means if anything goes wrong $$$.
|
| Electric, more reliable, easier to work on. With the same
| or better performance.
|
| If the early adopters have a good experience, everyone else
| is going to follow.
| pmorici wrote:
| Anecdotally, I know someone who saw the Electric Hummer
| commercial during the Super Bowl earlier this year and it
| led him down a path that ended in him buying a Model Y a
| few weeks ago. Other players announcing vehicles that are
| years away from production is a net positive for Tesla
| sales. It's counter intuitive so not many people under
| stand that but it is definitely a thing from what I've
| observed. The mechanism is that you have these companies
| talking about electric vehicles which brings more attention
| to the coming change in technology and Tesla has a wider
| selection of best in class for the price electric vehicles
| than anyone else that you can buy right now and not wait.
| syshum wrote:
| >> I already know republican types in rural areas that even
| want to get the Cybertruck
|
| I call BS on that, of the many many many Truck owners I know
| maybe 10% have any interest in the Cybertruck... Of that 10%
| none of them use their truck for work or as an actual truck
|
| The CyberTruck is targeting Late Gen X and Millennials the
| grew up with 80's and 90's movies with nostalgia, not a
| practical usable truck
|
| Now the F150 Lightening that has about 60-70+% of the Truck
| Owners I know interested
| kirse wrote:
| Doesn't matter who you vote for if you can show up to a work
| site with a Diesel-Electric hybrid that has enough torque to
| unsafely tow a loaded semi trailer and power everything
| needed for the day. Truck manufacturers will figure it out
| over the next decade.
| canadianfella wrote:
| Why diesel?
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Next decade? Try next year. The F150 Lightning will
| absolutely dominate the fleet truck space if it comes
| anywhere close to delivering the promised specs.
| daenz wrote:
| I personally am not interested in the Cybertruck until it
| gets more mainstream. The thing is a target for every
| disgruntled driver who sees it in a parking lot. Telsa's
| already seem to be targeted frequently[0]. I don't need that
| kind of grief in my life.
|
| 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzpNC2zMAys (dramatic, but
| there are plenty more of these kinds of videos)
| grahamburger wrote:
| On paper I'm the type of person who ought to be interested
| in a cybertruck but I'm finding myself a lot more
| interested in the Ford F-150 Lightning.
| Sanguinaire wrote:
| Same here. Being in the UK means getting an F150 is
| pretty unlikely as I'd be worried about it fitting on
| some of our roads, but it is far more appealing than the
| cybertruck even for me as a soft, liberal tech worker.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I planned on jumping straight to a diesel Prius.
|
| That way both sides hate me.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0QXTKWBtke8
| wearywanderer wrote:
| Anecdotally, macho gearhead types seem to generally
| respect the premise diesel-electrics, because freight
| trains. Because it's been so successful in locomotives,
| these sort see diesel-electric as proven, powerful, and
| sufficiently macho.
| Syonyk wrote:
| Nah, that's just boring. Go with a diesel Insight. There
| have been a few diesel swaps on the 1st gen Insights that
| manage the same or better fuel economy than the gas
| hybrid version.
|
| https://www.thedrive.com/news/38291/this-2000-honda-
| insight-...
|
| The Honda hybrid tech of that time is a lot easier to
| swap engines on. A Prius has the motors in the
| transmission, so it's harder to simply bolt a new engine
| on. You'd have to either drive the transaxle with your
| own control algorithms, or figure out another way to make
| it behave with a different engine. The Honda electric
| motor was on the engine crankshaft, and you could get the
| Insight with a manual transmission, so it's really just
| "bolt in the motor and go."
| s5300 wrote:
| No, this is a good thing.
|
| All Tesla's have cameras running on them nearly all the
| time. Any "disgruntled" driver who does any amount of
| various illegal things to them can easily be found and
| punished in the legal system. Quickest way to end the
| bullshit.
| kaliszad wrote:
| In Germany, this would probably end badly for the owner
| of the car doing the filming in a public space and the
| vandal would probably walk free with his/ her legal fees
| getting paid by the owner of the car, if the vandal would
| caught at all. It is illegal to monitor a public space
| and violates personality rights.
|
| A reasonable judge might perhaps give the owner of the
| car a hefty fine for violating personal rights and order
| the vandal to pay for the damage. IANAL. Either way, I
| don't see it as a winning strategy to film anything in a
| public space in Germany, it will get you in trouble and
| will most likely not solve anything.
|
| I think vandalism is the kind of thing that cannot be
| excused in adults. Certainly damaging anybody's car on
| purpose is something only a complete idiot would do.
| s5300 wrote:
| I do not think that Tesla would be making a _gigafactory_
| in Germany if they were to make them disable a primary
| feature of the car.
|
| I could be wrong. I don't know, but I've never heard of
| anybody bringing up this issue.
| belter wrote:
| It is illegal ? So when are they shutting down all those
| cameras in Berlin, apparently its the second most
| surveilled city in Europe after London:
| https://www.statista.com/chart/19268/most-surveilled-
| cities-...
| pokot0 wrote:
| Honestly this happens to all cars and it's hardly evidence
| people target Tesla's more than any other brand.
|
| Beware of getting your information from youtube.
| daenz wrote:
| The Cybertruck stands out. Things that stand out get
| targeted. I don't want my car to be targeted. It's that
| simple for me.
| sunstone wrote:
| When Tesla first introduced the cyber truck they were
| unsure about the demand and also unsure about the 4680 cell
| manufacturing. Both of these are now settled. It's not
| impossible that Tesla will drop the prices substantially
| when they finally go on sale.
| jsight wrote:
| Considering that they said 12-18 months more for volume
| 4680 production, I don't think that is settled yet.
| sunstone wrote:
| Tesla wouldn't be using the 4680 in the model Y if the
| 4680's status was in doubt.
| TheDong wrote:
| > This paves the way for electric cars that a working class mom
| and dad can afford to get to and from work and the store.
|
| Are we not already there in terms of car prices? In SF, a used
| nissan leaf can be had for from $10k-15k. New EVs aren't
| actually vastly different in price from new economy cars,
| especially if you take into account various credits.
|
| To me, it seems like the main reason electric cars are
| relatively uncommon is not because the sticker price is too
| high, but rather because of factors like home charging
| (requires dedicated parking & possibly an expensive charger
| installed), fear of needing a second car _anyway_ for longer
| trips (partly due to awful charging infrastructure / range
| issues), and relatively few of them existing on the used
| market.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| What do replacement batteries cost, though?
| speedgoose wrote:
| Very few people replace their car battery. Like very few
| people replace their car engine. It happens, preferably
| under warranty, but it's not really something you consider
| when you buy a car.
|
| If the battery degradation makes the car unfit to your
| needs, it's a bit weird because it would mean you were on
| the limit, but anyway it's more economic to sell the car as
| it is and buy another car. Someone will enjoy the old
| battery.
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| There is a big difference between replacing a car engine
| vs replacing a car battery. The hardest part is lifting
| the heavy battery out and putting the new one in. With a
| gas engine, there is belts, timing, oil, and lots of
| other things I am not even aware of.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Generally, if something fails in the battery it is
| individual cells and those can be replaced separately. It
| is rare for the entire battery pack to fail at one time.
| captrb wrote:
| I recall this article about the total maintenance costs of
| a Model X cab with 400k miles. It's a very interesting look
| at total cost of ownership over time.
|
| https://electrek.co/2020/05/11/tesla-model-x-extreme-
| mileage...
| rsj_hn wrote:
| That is, unfortunately, anecdata. Everyone keeps telling
| me that electric cars have fewer moving parts and have
| such low maintenance costs that they cost 90% less to
| maintain, at which point I turn around and ask why Tesla
| doesn't offer a bumper to bumper 20 year warranty,
| because they can benefit from the law of large numbers.
| If the repair costs are so much better, this should be
| easy to do, right? That's the point where my interlocuter
| usually walks away as they have no answer.
|
| One way you can try to estimate what the real maintenance
| cost is in the first X years is to look at what
| automakers set aside for warranties. In that case, (the
| last I looked), Tesla seemed in the middle of the pack
| vis-a-vis major ICE makers. But then you have the 20-X
| years of service, and the dirty secret is that those
| years are also paid for by new owners except they pay
| those repairs forward as depreciation when they sell. So
| then you look at depreciation curves, to see if Tesla is
| holding up much better than ICE vehicles due to lower
| expected maintenance costs and there, too, Tesla appears
| to be right in line with other major producers. So bottom
| line, I can't find any evidence for the thesis that
| getting rid of all these components will significantly
| reduce lifetime maintenance costs, while the battery
| costs remain a big unknown.
|
| Now part of this is just not having enough data. In 20
| years, we'll have a lot more data, and then maybe the
| warranty policies and depreciation curves will look very
| different. But this goes back to my point which is why
| isn't Tesla insuring the buyers against this risk by
| selling massive 20 year waranties to stand behind these
| claims of long service life and very low maintenance
| costs? Why leave people searching for anecdata in a new
| car whose service costs they don't have the data to
| estimate?
|
| For most people a car is a major portion of their net-
| worth and they tend to be conservative in making this
| purchase. Sure, for high income buyers, they can afford
| to take risks but most buyers can't. So why doesn't Tesla
| do more to insure prospective buyers against this risk?
| It seems like such a no brainer, and yet many companies
| insist on pushing risk onto the customer. This isn't just
| an issue with Tesla, but I see it in many industries,
| where the producer is the one who has the survivorship
| data, they benefit from the law of large numbers, and
| they have financial backing, they are in a position to
| sell insurance, and people would buy the insurance, but
| the insurance just isn't being offerred, and if it is
| offered, it's on absolutely terrible terms, rather than
| as something to remove purchase frictions.
| jliptzin wrote:
| Even if it's not 90% less maintenance cost, I can tell
| you in the 2 years since I've owned my Model 3 (20k
| miles) I've brought it in for maintenance items zero
| times. In an ICE car that would have been like 6 annoying
| oil changes by now? That's more than enough to convince
| me.
| danpattn wrote:
| Tesla doesn't have a problem selling the cars it makes.
| Why take on an additional financial risk in order to
| increase demand?
| rsj_hn wrote:
| That's a good argument.
|
| But if you think Tesla is averse to taking on risk, how
| much more risk-averse would the customers take on? Tesla
| has the law of large numbers and technical data available
| to them. They are in a position to arbitrage that and get
| (expected) free money by selling long term insurance to
| buyers for whom the insurance is a lot more valuable than
| what it costs Tesla, so why wouldn't they do that?
|
| If indeed the EVs are so much more durable and have such
| lower maintenance costs but are surrounded by a cloud of
| doubt, why not remove that cloud? Even if Tesla doesn't
| ramp up production faster, the increased demand would
| allow them to command a higher price until production was
| ramped up.
|
| So if indeed the market is wrong and depreciation curves
| are too steep, Tesla can arbitrage that. Why they don't
| should raise some questions, at least it does to me.
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| I'm not finding a hole in this argument. It's especially
| interesting because Elon has a reputation as a risk-
| taker, so I would expect him to steer Tesla in this
| direction if it were possible and profitable.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| I dont really know why you are getting downvoted for a
| well reasoned counter-argument to the boundless
| optimisim.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| How much do replacement engines cost for ICE cars? I bet
| you don't know that or think about it when getting an ICE
| car.
|
| Engine replacement rates will probably be historically
| higher than battery replacement within standard car
| lifetimes. It's possibly that a battery car will last
| longer than an ICE due to less moving parts, but even then
| I think long-lived EV cars will be relegated to city car
| duties with reduced ranges.
|
| Batteries usually degrade rather than catastrophically fail
| (exempting the dramatic but rare battery fire which I
| believe happen less than ICE fires).
| maxerickson wrote:
| The Nissan Versa starts at ~$15,000 new.
|
| I'm not sure that it's possible to exclude it from the
| "economy car" category.
| dagurp wrote:
| Exactly. VW say that an ID.3 is much cheaper to make than a
| Golf but it's still a lot more expensive to buy
| canadianfella wrote:
| > Lithium is a conflict resource. its scarce, its hard to mine,
|
| 3 lies in 11 words.
| davmar wrote:
| Well, my used 2016 Nissan Leaf was $11k so while you're correct
| that Telsa appeals to the well-off, not all EVs have the same
| market.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| $11K is still a lot for a lot of people who need a car. I
| generally put a limit of $4K on a car, and I could easily
| afford to buy brand-new. Some people don't have that choice.
| hedora wrote:
| If you have the chance to visit China, I suggest doing so.
| They've already converted most personal vehicles to electric.
| Cars aren't nearly as popular as scooters, rickshaws, etc.,
| which cost $100s (or maybe low $1000's) in US dollars, new.
|
| At that price point, consumables for an internal combustion
| engine start to be a significant fraction of the vehicle cost.
|
| Lithium batteries are hardly only a plaything for the rich.
| seaman1921 wrote:
| lifetime? Companies like Hyliion are targeting a RNG+electric
| class-8 launch this year from what I have read
| ashtonkem wrote:
| > and of course electric trucks that have obscene amounts of
| torque means never "getting stuck" behind a slow truck ever
| again
|
| If you've ever read old car advertisements, they would say the
| exact same thing about old supercars that would lose a drag
| race against a Toyota Corolla.
|
| In reality speed and torque is an arms race among most road
| users. For a short while whoever has the nicest car has the
| ability to rapidly outrun anyone else, but that advantage
| diminishes as the technology gets cheaper and more common. In
| 20 years a modern Tesla will not be considered fast at all.
| airbreather wrote:
| you can only apply so much power thru the tires before
| adhesion is lost, we are close to that limit now
| Shikadi wrote:
| We just need thrusters on top to provide more downforce
| dieortin wrote:
| We're way beyond that limit since long ago.
| esturk wrote:
| Can't diesel engines run on jet fuel? For this reason, I can't
| imagine diesel engines ever going away as long as there are
| amateur pilots.
| s0rce wrote:
| Non-jet engine aircrafts run on avgas, which isn't diesel
| like jetfuel, basically just high octane gasoline.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| Nitpick: A minority of general aviation planes have diesel
| engines.
| hollerith wrote:
| Huh? There are approximately zero amateur pilots that own
| _jet_ aircraft -- they cost too much.
|
| Certainly not enough to help keep alive the market for diesel
| pickup trucks.
| Treblemaker wrote:
| According to a 2017 report by the Airline Owners and Pilots
| Association (AOPA) [1], general aviation -- defined as all
| civilian flying except scheduled passenger airline service
| -- consumed 209 million gallons of avgas and 1.8 billion
| gallons of jet fuel.
|
| NB: turboprop aircraft also consume jet fuel.
|
| [1] http://download.aopa.org/hr/Report_on_General_Aviation_
| Trend...
| pmorici wrote:
| The base level Tesla Model 3 already costs just under the US
| average ($40,875) for a new car. [0] A Tesla has been
| affordable to the average middle class person for several years
| now. Maybe not on part with the cheapest new cars (~$20k) but
| within the next 5 years they will be.
|
| [0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-now-the-average-
| pr...
| Sharlin wrote:
| According to quick googling, sales of used cars outnumber new
| car sales by about 2.5:1 in the US. The ratio is almost
| certainly higher in other parts of the world. Anyway,
| globally speaking the US middle class is, of course,
| extremely wealthy. Even in most Western countries EUR$PS40k
| cars are not really affordable to the middle class.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| How is lithium a conflict mineral? 51k tons mined in Australia,
| then the other top 3 countries are Argentina 16k, Chile and
| china 8k.
|
| If you want to speak of conflict minerals for EVs, cobalt is
| WAY more problematic, since it is far more rare and mined
| mostly in the DRC, where we know child labor and starvation pay
| is given for the work that allows EV cathodes their precious
| Co.
|
| https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2020/03/lithium...
| belter wrote:
| Portugal is on the top ten of reserves. Its very concerning
| how lobbying pressure to buy political influence is already
| starting.
|
| Having mineral resources its kind of a curse:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/268790/countries-with-
| th...
| curryslapper wrote:
| yes.
| airbreather wrote:
| I am working the big Albemarle project in Western Australia,
| plenty of conflict in the project teams...
| snypher wrote:
| On the last day of the month, do you get to keep as much
| lithium as you can carry home? I'm not sure how we can make
| a joke about conflict minerals.
| CPUstring wrote:
| You can make a joke because that, while conflict minerals
| are horrible and cause enormous damage to human life, the
| conflicts between people on a team are also very small.
| Comparing the two as if they are equivalent, when we all
| know they aren't, is funny.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Bolivia has only recently defeated a US-backed coup.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Was lithium the purpose or are there greater issues at hand
| and Bolivia happens to have lithium deposits?
| lucian1900 wrote:
| The timing is highly suspect, right after Bolivia refused
| a ~5% offer of joint extraction from a German company in
| favour of a 50% one from a Chinese one. The US also has a
| long history of aggression for resources.
|
| It could be more than just that too, the Monroe doctrine
| is alive and well. All South American anti-imperialists
| get attacked by the US.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| And Elon supported this explicitly.
|
| https://twitter.com/panoparker/status/1318157559266762752?s
| =...
| nl wrote:
| I'm about as far from a Musk fan as it is possible to be,
| but this is so clearly a joke that it take a real effort
| to read some kind of evil intent into it (beyond Musk's
| normal "I'm trolling on Twitter" annoying nature).
|
| But I've seen people claim this before - I'm curious if
| there is a source this keeps coming from?
| scythe wrote:
| The idea that the Bolivian transfer of power was motivated
| by lithium scarcity doesn't make sense, because there's
| more than enough lithium outside of Bolivia (or even South
| America) to prevent them from gaining a stranglehold on the
| price. Also, you're accusing the Trump administration of
| having a long-term view of a low-carbon future, which is
| itself suspect.
|
| What makes _a lot more sense_ is that the US doesn 't want
| China to gain a reliable and possibly even prosperous ally
| on the South American mainland. While Bolivia will not
| meaningfully affect the global supply of lithium, the
| demand for lithium will absolutely affect the economic
| future of Bolivia, and could even make it a regional power.
| With the Second Cold War increasingly going global, every
| square on the chessboard counts.
|
| However, the evidence for US involvement in the overthrow
| of Morales so far consists of a strongly worded letter from
| OAS, while the fact that Morales actually _lost_ a
| referendum asking if he should be allowed to run for a
| fourth term suggests that there was significant internal
| opposition to his reelection. But Elon Musk made a
| tasteless joke on Twitter, so that confirms it.
| chrischen wrote:
| After reading up on the situation it's probably less to
| do with lithium and more with the US's "left hand shoving
| cocaine up our noses while right hand slaps South
| American countries for making it" policy.
|
| Morales was anti-US influence, pro-coca. The right
| wingers and Evangelicals were against him, and Morales
| was socialist... basically fits the profile of exactly
| the type of leader the CIA would try to depose.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Just because there are other sources doesn't mean
| capitalists won't try to get control over Bolivia's. The
| US permanent state also doesn't depend on a specific
| administration; the interests of industry, banking and
| monopoly capitalists are always served, with minimal
| variation.
|
| The fascists that staged the coup had long been supported
| by the US, the OAS is merely one small part of the
| imperialist apparatus. And Elon Musk doesn't need to be
| in on it to recognise he would benefit.
| andrewfromx wrote:
| makes me think of https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-
| stories/project-natick... and using the "wasted" heat those
| servers generate to do something with seawater like extract
| lithium or just salt and make fresh drinking water?
| _Microft wrote:
| Adding another solution to the issue of mining lithium for
| batteries at scale is awesome, I hope they find a way to deal
| with the brine that this produces (Edit: it does not really
| produce brine in the classical sense according to the paper [0]).
|
| Maybe this process could be a way to _deal with brine_ from
| seawater desalination [1] by at least removing lithium ions from
| the waste water. Since the ion concentration in the waste water
| is higher than in seawater, it should theoretically make the
| lithium separation process easier, shouldn 't it?
|
| Another thing: combining this with cheap solar power and seawater
| lithium mining might be a part of a possible solution for a post-
| oil industry in the Gulf States? They did the tests on Red Sea
| seawater which has a higher salinity than most other seawater but
| apparantly the eastern Mediterranean matches or even surpasses
| that [2].
|
| [0] _" It is also noted that the total concentration of other
| salts after the first stage is less than 500 ppm, which implies
| that after lithium harvest, the remaining water can be treated as
| freshwater. Hence, the process also has a potential to integrate
| with seawater desalination to further enhance its economic
| viability"_, from page 5, (PDF)
| https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2021/ee/d1ee00354...
|
| [1] I am not linking to a particular article but this is what I
| am talking about:
| https://www.google.de/search?q=toxic+brine+seawater+drinking...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salinity#/media/File:WOA09_sea...
| AYBABTME wrote:
| The concern over brine is something I'm willing to contemplate
| but on the face of it, it seems to me that brine would only be
| a problem in the immediate zone where it is returned.
|
| And then again the fresh water produced along with the brine
| will end up back in mostly the same surrounding after it gets
| used, so it's not like we're producing saltier and saltier
| water over time?
|
| So aside from the increased salinity at the specific location
| where the brine is returned to the sea, is there another issue?
| Am I missing something that makes all this a large scale
| problem?
| Zenst wrote:
| > fresh water produced along
|
| Oh, if they are producing fresh water as well then isn't this
| good as desalination is already needed in some area's. So the
| studies upon the brine they output would be useful to measure
| any impact. Which would be localised - how localised and
| impacting is really the question here and for that we can
| look at existing drinking water from sea water production.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| This brine argument makes no sense - they are extracting
| lithium - you can pump everything else back if you want
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Not necessarily a "large scale" problem but the increased
| salinity means you create a enormous dead zone near your
| output system unless you spend a ton of energy to mitigate
| it.
|
| We had Bechtel design us a desalination/RO system for a
| biofuel startup I worked with and to prevent the dead zone,
| you need a _massive_ system of buried pipes in the ocean.
| Iirc, it was the most expensive part of the entire design
| since you need to output it over something like a square
| kilometer and you need to mix in fresh seawater at several
| points to dilute the effluent before you release it. So in
| addition to the CapEx of a construction project in a horribly
| hostile environment, you have permanent energy consumption
| even past the filters.
|
| And of course, since it's coastal, there are tons of
| regulations and government bodies interested in making sure
| you don't cut corners.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| Interesting answer and thanks for providing it. Do you
| think the geography of the coast changes how expensive this
| gets? I'd think a coast that goes deep quickly or has
| strong currents wouldn't need as much spread out disposal
| infrastructure as one in a shallow area.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Yeah it 100% does - mixing rate is a big design driver.
| We actually had decided that is was better for our
| primary effluent pipe to be several KM longer to reach
| the "coast" vs the smaller bay that we were immediately
| adjacent to.
|
| But even then, if the ends of your system are in 50' deep
| ocean, the water column is such that the top ~10% sees
| really good mixing and exchange due to wind and wave
| action but the rest really doesn't. It's rare that there
| are strong currents near enough coastlines to take
| advantage of.
| hasmanean wrote:
| Wow, most people never consider the dead-zone around
| desalination plants. Us landlubbers just think of it as
| manna from heaven, "free freshwater."
|
| The way we discuss technical solutions is woefully
| inadequate. Everything is still presented as a miracle-cure
| for our problems. We should have a more mature
| understanding of how these things are constructed and
| maintained.
| goldenkey wrote:
| The ocean is pretty big. That's why fish poop and pee in
| it. Not much of a problem. And if you weren't already
| aware, did you know plants also excrete waste through
| their roots? I only found out recently. But yes, all
| waste needs to be spread out and able to diffuse into the
| large atmosphere or it causes dead zones.
| hasmanean wrote:
| Yes.
|
| One piece of poop in the forest--nature.
|
| A sewer pipe discharging a river of poop from an entire
| city into a forest--a toxic waste dump.
|
| The entire surface of the sea is evaporating fresh water
| and the resulting brine is slinging constantly. It's not
| creating a dead zone because it's distributed. A river of
| brine in the oceans would be like a toxic cloud of
| ammonia that kills anything it touches...until it mixes
| sufficiently.
| pl-94 wrote:
| Plant wastes are a part of an eco system. They are
| cunsomed and transformed into other wastes. Actually,
| only human beings see wastes as a definitive lost. For
| every sustainable cycles, a waste is going to be
| transformed into you will consume again.
| mrfusion wrote:
| There must be some creative solutions to the brine problem.
| At the end of the day we're really not processing much
| seawater compared to the size of the ocean.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Right but the size of the ocean is the wrong metric -
| it's really only the coastal region adjacent to the desal
| plant that you have to work with, and the chemistry and
| power realities mean that you just have a ton of very
| salty water to pump through pipes.
| highenergystar wrote:
| Put the lithium plant on a barge and tug it around
| without lingering too long in any one spot.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Awesome idea! Or even build on a platform and locate in a
| major current like the Gulf Stream. That could mix it
| pretty fast.
| ant6n wrote:
| Wouldnt a platform to hold a factory be more expensive
| than a few km of pipes?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Not just a factory, but the primary issue with desal is
| that it takes a ton of energy, so you'd also need a power
| plant...
| choeger wrote:
| I wonder if one could not simply pump it into some old
| oil reservoirs. The nations that need to do seawater
| refining should have some nearly empty oilfields lying
| around.
| s0rce wrote:
| Salt water intrusion into the aquifer is pretty bad for
| agriculture. Not sure if that would be a problem with
| refilling oil reservoirs but I'm not an expert.
| mrfusion wrote:
| The brine problem is played up because environmentalists
| don't like building new industry to solve environmental
| problems. A big part of their psyche is that man must suffer
| for his sins against nature. IMO.
| baq wrote:
| No, environmentalists simply say that it's worth to
| preserve the environment that humanity evolved in. One
| reason is for our grandchildren to be able to experience it
| and another is we don't really know what happens if we
| destroy too much of it - we do have localized examples
| though and they're really not good.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| Environmentalists are mostly political today, they focus
| their efforts on benign & wealthy countries instead of
| the most polluting. (Which are often poor or run by
| dictatorships)
| admax88q wrote:
| I, too, focus on problems at home that I have any hope of
| changing rather than yelling at countries on the other
| side of the planet that have zero incentive to listen to
| me.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| Are you suggesting no country should tell any other
| country how to be environmentally conscience?
|
| I would argue that those countries that are cleaner have
| the moral authority to lead the way to a cleaner planet.
| admax88q wrote:
| I'm suggesting it is bullshit to disparage
| environmentalists just because theyre focused on problems
| in their local country.
|
| Countries should totally put pressure on others, but
| individual environmentalists putting pressure on their
| local countries makes sense.
| 8note wrote:
| the US, by virtue of having guns pointed at the leaders
| of every other country, should be telling every other
| country to be environmentally conscious.
|
| Unfortunately, the US itself needs to beinfluenced into
| being environmentally conscious
| beebeepka wrote:
| The environment. Yes or no?
|
| Candidate 1: No. It's junk science.
|
| Candidate 2: Two words: Condor attack. Don't want that. Got
| to say no.
|
| ...
|
| Candidate 5: Enviro-mite!
| benevol wrote:
| The solutions described are not the ultimate ones, yet.
|
| The real solution will be to:
|
| "Make salt magnetic and pull it out of the water, in real-time,
| with electro-magnets."
|
| https://audio.kryon.com/en/What's%20Wrong%20Today.mp3 (start
| the audio at 18:20, for the gist and some more details)
| goldenkey wrote:
| It's one of those "hipster" podcasts by the UI designer at
| _that_ startup: https://whats-wrong-with-the-
| podcast.simplecast.com/
|
| "Make oxygen magnetic and then just pull it out of water to
| produce hydrogen"
|
| I too like to fantasize. :-)
| Forbo wrote:
| What's wrong with the link? :-P
|
| > "Unconfigured Simplecast Domain You are seeing this page
| because your website is not configured properly."
| goldenkey wrote:
| It couldn't deal with HN traffic I guess. Here's a cache
| link: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cac
| he:ImywwL...
| sandworm101 wrote:
| It depends. There is chemistry here too, not just physical
| membranes. Higher concentrations of everything else might
| interfere with only getting at the lithium.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Would there even be any brine? If they take out the lithium but
| don't take any water out (remix everything other than lithium)
| then the net effect on salinity would be almost nothing. It
| would make economic sense to colocated, to also do freshwater
| extraction at the same facility, but the removal of the lithium
| would then be beside the point.
|
| I wonder if the process can work for other more valuable
| substances. Uranium from seawater has been done for a while
| now. This process might make it cheaper than mining. The world
| could change if every country with access to the sea can start
| extracting such things.
| brightball wrote:
| Between this and the discovery of producing Graphene without
| mining, the future of battery tech should be really
| interesting.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2021/05/13/ev-ran...
| scythe wrote:
| You can obtain a few things from desalination brines. Magnesium
| is the most plentiful, besides salt, of course. There's also
| some sulfur, bromine and boron that _might_ be worth
| recovering. It 's mostly theoretical, of course.
| Taniwha wrote:
| $5 a kilogram from seawater seems almost magical, I look forwards
| to the actual proof.
| adrian_b wrote:
| $5 per kg for the electricity expenses is far from magical, but
| it should be low enough to make the extraction profitable.
|
| I do not know the current price of lithium, because most
| previous information sources, like the metal exchanges, no
| longer make their data public.
|
| Nevertheless, a few years ago lithium was around $66 per kg.
|
| So $5 would be just about 7.5% of the price per kg, but there
| are a lot of other costs, like replacing from time to time the
| expensive LLTO ceramic membrane and the very expensive Pt-Ru
| coated cathode and also many other operational costs and the
| amortization of the investment.
|
| For reversible batteries, the conversion of lithium phosphate
| to another lithium salt might be enough, but for applications
| that need metallic lithium, like primary batteries or Li-Al
| alloys, the lithium phosphate must be converted into lithium
| chloride or other suitable salt and the metallic lithium must
| be extracted by electrolysis, with additional, higher, costs
| for electric energy.
|
| However, the method described is sound and there are also
| useful byproducts to ensure or increase the profit.
|
| The method is not new, but the major achievement is finding a
| suitable material for the selective membrane, which passes
| lithium but blocks the much more abundant sodium & potassium.
|
| Unlike many such announcements, this appears to have good
| chances to eventually be used for lithium extraction.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > the very expensive Pt-Ru coated cathode
|
| The Pt-Ru is just a catalyst, no? Maybe it gets contaminated
| but it would hopefully be recycled. Might even go up in value
| over time rather than be consumed.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Well, that $5 per kg is highly dependent on purity.
|
| If they get chemical grade lithium without extra steps, it might
| well be cheaper than "mining"
| rasz wrote:
| Extracting from the sea might be more ecological than mining.
| [deleted]
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