A Primer on Lithium

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Funkworks

Low Earth Orbit, obstructing Earth's view of Venus
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Aerospace alloys, bomb triggers and electric storage - just how much fun can you handle!

Summary:
20% demand growth each year for the next 20 years.
A magical thing but is there even enough on Earth?
Maybe if we recycle it, but that's for later.

 
"bomb triggers "

I believe they maybe be referring to the neutron generator trigger. However, far more significantly since other metals such as beryllium can be used in neutron generators, lithium-6 deuteride was targeted for use in thermonuclear secondaries until it was discovered that the far more abundant isotope, lithium-7 worked very well, too. They learned that when the yield of one of their tests was significantly larger than expected:

Castle Bravo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo
Castle Bravo was the first in a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapon design tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as part of Operation Castle. Detonated on March 1, 1954, the device was the most powerful nuclear device detonated by the United States and its first lithium deuteride fueled thermonuclear weapon. Castle Bravo's yield was 15 megatons of TNT, 2.5 times the predicted 6.0 megatons, due to unforeseen additional reactions involving lithium-7, which led to the unexpected radioactive contamination of areas to the east of Bikini Atoll. At the time, it was the most powerful artificial explosion in history.

Funny anecdote from during the time the US nuke effort was secretly extracting lithium-6 from lithium metal to use in nukes: some US scholar designed a particle detector which relied on the natural amount (7.59%) of lithium-6 in natural lithium metal to work. It didn't work because the lithium-6 had been extracted from the lithium metal being sold in the lab reagent grade metal market at the time. He didn't know that.
 
I like that graph. What really matters to geologists and engineers (for economics) is the relative abundances on Earth not in stars. The graph shows we have about as much lithium as copper, 10x more than lead and roughly 100x more than silver and gold. I can’t comment on how much has been extracted so far, costs, or whatever geopolitics is involved, but technically, it looks very interesting.

Like other metals, we’ll just bring whatever we can over to the surface and trade it until recycling becomes cheaper than pulling out some more. Plenty of widgets have yet to be engineered with this stuff.
 
Much of the lithium is in seawater, people are working on a practical method of extraction but not there yet.
If we all are are going to ride around in electric everything we need this process.

M
 
There’s a large lithium mine at Silver Peak, NV that I would drive by on the way to Reno. It uses the old evaporation method. There’s an awesome natural hot spring nearby.

A nearby fishing vessel was highly radiated from the Castle Bravo test because of the unplanned yield.
 
I like that graph. What really matters to geologists and engineers (for economics) is the relative abundances on Earth not in stars. The graph shows we have about as much lithium as copper, 10x more than lead and roughly 100x more than silver and gold. I can’t comment on how much has been extracted so far, costs, or whatever geopolitics is involved, but technically, it looks very interesting.
Most of the primordial heavy elements are down in the core with iron. What we can reach mostly came in the Late Heavy Bombardment 3.9-3.8 billion years ago.
 
JULY 17, 2020
Replacing lithium with sodium in batteries

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-lithium-sodium-batteries.html
An international team of scientists from NUST MISIS, Russian Academy of Science and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf has found that instead of lithium (Li), sodium (Na) "stacked" in a special way can be used for battery production. Sodium batteries would be significantly cheaper and equivalently or even more capacious than existing lithium batteries. The results of the study are published in the journal Nano Energy.
 
JULY 17, 2020
Replacing lithium with sodium in batteries

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-lithium-sodium-batteries.html
An international team of scientists from NUST MISIS, Russian Academy of Science and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf has found that instead of lithium (Li), sodium (Na) "stacked" in a special way can be used for battery production. Sodium batteries would be significantly cheaper and equivalently or even more capacious than existing lithium batteries. The results of the study are published in the journal Nano Energy.
Fun with sodium in water. Safety glasses are for pussies, apparently...

 
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