Lithium
The New York Times has an interesting article about lithium earlier this month. Lithium is a necessary component of lightweight batteries. Leaving aside the bizarre tone of the article, it makes the point that world lithium reserves are relatively small. The reasons for this are cosmochemical, geological, and economic.
Elemental abundance generally decreases with increasing atomic number in the solar system. There are, however, three light elements that are much less abundant than one would expect. These elements are Lithium, Beryllium and Boron. These elements tend to be completely consumed in stars as rapidly as they are synthesized: our earthly endowment results largely from the interaction of cosmic rays with other light elements.
Lithium was once retrieved from the giant spodumene pegmatite deposits of the Black Hills and other localities. Now Lithium is retrieved almost exclusively from brines in salt lakes or deposits, sediment altered by geothermal waters, or geothermal waters. For a more complete discussion of Li and Li deposits see the Lithium Blog!
There has been some concern expressed that Li resources will not be sufficient to meet demand. My opinion is that Li-battery technology is too immature to make a precise determination. It is unlikely that Li will be in short supply for the forseeable future, however. Does this contradict the third sentence of this post? Not at all. Lithium has not been traded on the scale that will be required if all cars carry Li batteries. In a situation like this the resource base could be quite large but the reserves would be insufficent to meet the increased demand.
Posted: February 27th, 2009 under Uncategorized.