If
electric vehicles or their analogous plug-in-electric hybrid vehicles
(PHEV) are to become widespread in the face of a lack of cheap oil,
some source of battery technology will be necessary to carry the charge
to run them. I wrote an article a couple of years ago [1] in which I
concluded there was insufficient lithium to fabricate an equivalent of
500 million cars, as was then estimated to be on the roads worldwide,
by PHEV's. This was based on the assumption that the world stock of
lithium was around 5 million tonnes and that it would take 9 million
tonnes to make 500 million PHEV's. For all-electric cars, the situation
is worse since they each take four times the amount of lithium that a
PHEV would. I did also refer to other kinds of battery technology which
use materials that are known to be more abundant.
However, the
amount of lithium in the world has now been called into question, and
one analyst thinks there is much more of it available [2], mostly based
in Chile's Atacama desert, amounting to an economically recoverable
total of 28.4 million tonnes. Clearly that would be plenty: enough for
1.58 billion PHEV cars or
almost 400 million fully electric vehicles, so the physical amount of
lithium is not a problem. There are also sources of lithium in the
Andes and in Tibet, along with hectorite (a lithium containing clay)
and oil-field brines that contain lithium, albeit more expensive to
extract than the mountain-sources, and the material should be
recycleable, so for example a direct comparison with the oil the
technology is intended to replace is not strictly justified.
The
issue is not without contention, however, since another author [3]
concludes there are 6.2 million tonnes in reserves of lithium and its
reserve base is 13.4 million tonnes.
In my opinion, if all
sources of lithium are worked-out there is probably enough of it to go
round to make 600 million cars, as there are now. It should be noted
that there is an increasing demand for the metal to go into laptop
computers and mobile phones, and it is anyone's guess what that total
demand might amount to.
However, the latter devices are made out
of oil too, and with current roaring prices which I do not expect to
fall, along with a near and eventual shortage of oil, I see another
limiting factor - raw materials to make plastics from and the lack of
money in people's pockets rather than of lithium.
60 million new
cars are put on the roads each year and if they were made as PHEV's
which might take 18 kg of lithium each, we would need an annual
production of 1.08 million tonnes of it. This is around 54 times the
present output of lithium (20,000 tonnes), and so that is the increase in production
capacity (mining and processing) that would need to be installed - a
considerable and probably impossible task. If it could be done, we would be "there" within 10
years. However, will there be enough energy to do the job, and what
will these cars actually cost by then?
Given that I see financial
distress for many in the West, the car may well be seen as a luxury and
by default, we will set-aside our travelling lifestyles in the
difficult oil dearth years ahead of us. We don't have 10 years in which
to begin reducing oil consumption: we need to do that now. If only we
had begun 10 years ago we would have saved massive amounts of oil, and
be facing-off a future gap in the supply/demand conundrum, with time in
hand. We didn't though, but permitted the market-forces to prevail.
Another
potential strife is that some kinds of lithium battery contain a
phosphate component and I have discussed recently that there are likely
to be problems with mining a finite source of rock phosphate which is
mainly used for agriculture. As a rough estimate, assuming one
phosphate anion per lithium cation in a lithium-iron-phosphate battery
(the strongest contender for EV's) 600 million cars would need around
148 million tonnes of phosphate or about 15 million tonnes a year
assuming we could equal the world annual total of 60 million new cars
annually. That is to be compared with the total phosphate mined for
food production of about 140 million tonnes, and so we would need to
sacrifice a good 10% of that, while a hungry population rises.
It
isn't going to happen, and to conclude once more, car use will be
curbed by a combination of factors, with all that implies for
civilization.
Related Reading.
[1] "Electric Vehicles and World Lithium Supply," By Chris Rhodes. http://ergobalance.blogspot.com/2006/10/electric-vehicles-and-world-lithium.html
[2] "Peak Lithium." By Bill Moore. http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?archive=1&storyid=1180&first=3171&end=3170
[3] "The Trouble with Lithium." ByWilliam Tahil. http://www.evworld.com/library/lithium_shortage.pdf
Author
Author
Biography: Chris Rhodes. www.fresh-lands.com Professor
Chris Rhodes is a writer, speaker and researcher who became involved with
environmental issues while working in Russia during the aftermath...
World Lithium Supplies and Electric Vehicles.
3 Jun, 2008 10:58 am
In the potential conversion of the world's road fleet from oil-based fuel to electric or PHEV type transport, it is not the amount of lithium in total that is likely to be the problem but the rate of recovery of it. To match the present 60 million number of new cars on the roads each year, this would need to be expanded by fifty-fold, a considerable undertaking in mining and production which is probably impossible. Electric cars are likely to become a rich-man's luxury, while the level of transportation per se inevitably and vastly declines.
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thanks for letting me know about your forthcoming article. I look forward to reading it. I had expected some response to this, and really what I need is a definitive (ideally with some sums and hard numbers) value from someone as to exactly how much lithium equivalent goes into a PHEV system. There are many figures given on a number of web-sites - from 18 kg to 12 mg!!! I recall seeing someone using the Nernst Equation to estimate the amount but I can't find that article now - it seems to have been deleted. I guess I could do the sums myself when I have a moment.
It is further confusing because people don't distinguish between "lithium" as in the equivalent of lithium metal and various lithium salts, e.g. lithium carbonate!
If you can cast any light that would be much appreciated as it is such a critical issue.
Regards,
Chris.
So we will have to address overpopulation. The simplest way is to ensure that birth control is freely available to all who desire it. By those means, we could eliminate unwanted pregnancies and almost eliminate the annual increase. Yes the annual increase almost matches the number of unwanted pregnancies.
Anyhow, taking your analysis as being correct, it seems that the days of cheap personal transport other than bicycles are distinctly limited.
Your argument would be a lot more persuasive if the references were peer-reviewed. Such sources are much harder for the denial industry to debase. However, they have managed on occasions, but much of it is weeded-out.
Taking the article above at face value (dangerous), not that I'm casting aspersions, but with so much disinformation emanating from the fossil-fuel industry, it wouldn't surprise me if they would attempt to undermine alternative transport methods with cunningly devised spurious research, in an attempt to further delay emissions reductions and maximise their profits. FYI, Exxon et al. have been doing this with climate science for some time.
My assessment is without peer-reviewed science, this article is just an opinion and not to be taken seriously!
I apologise for the cynicism, but previous experience tells me that 'not all that glisters is gold'!
or as once garbled by GW Bush
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me! [Bush said it differently]
A few quick googles leads me to consider that on balance this article is probably reliable, but one can never be absolutely certain!
Science please!
Regards,
Chris.
For an up-date on the lithium availability debate, I suggest you to go to the following link: http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1480. Regards,
Juan Carlos Zuleta Calder?n
Thanks for letting me have the link to your most interesting article on lithium supplies.
My feeling is that comparing the amount of lithium needed per PHEV to the total amount available from a mineralogical indicates that the total amount of Li in the Earth is not the problem. Recovering and processing it fast enough might be.
I have trawled through various "facts and figures" about how much lithium is needed per PHEV and simple sums e.g. working through Ampere Hours etc. which indicate these may need less Li than the worst case scenario that I deliberately used here.
It seems to that Tahil thinks we need 1.4 kg of Li2CO3/Wh as opposed to about a third of that as estimated by other analysts. However, Tahil contends that the amount of Li in the electrode materials should be accounted for too. The Li-equivalent of lithium carbonate is 18.9%.
In rough numbers even if Tahil is right then it would take about 0.189 x 1.4 = 0.265 kg/kWh, and if 9 kWh are needed, that's 2.38 kg Li/PHEV.
If there is just 10 million tonnes of Li-equivalent (a lower estimate), that's enough for 4.2 billion vehicles and hence more than enough to supply 700 million as there are now on the world's roads.
However, to match 60 million new vehicles per year (the present number added per year to the world's road transportation fleet) , would require 2.34 kg x 60 million/1000 kg/tonne = 140,400 tonnes of Li-equivalent. That amounts to about seven times the world annual production of lithium and so, as I emphasise in the article above that means a necessary increase in production capacity, although less than the extreme that I used to try and provoke a response of some more sensible figures by someone!
The Tahil figures suggest an increase of around seven times, but the more optimistic estimates based on Ampere Hours etc. would indicate that around double the present production capacity would be necessary - all of course on top of the existing demand for Li which is likely to rise for computers, cell-phones etc. But it does begin to look more manageable.
I would like to tie-down the business of exactly how much Li is needed per PHEV, as it is such an important issue given the potential resource and financial investment in PHEV and BEV (which would use four times the amount of Li per vehicle assuming 35 kWh capacity rather than 9 kWh for the hybrid vehicle).
I think that production and fabrication along with the car-engineering could constitute a bottleneck for the development of this technology but it might be possible.
Do you have any further thoughts regarding the cell-technology and electrode composition and total amount of Li required - re Tahil?
Regards,
Chris.
Thanks for the timely piece on lithium supplies. And, of course, it is only one of a series of critical metal shortages which we may face in the coming decades. Especially important is the stocks versus flows issue. Yes, all of the metal we might ever need is available from the Earth's crust and in seawater. But how much of it will we actually be able to recover given the energy constraints we are likely to face (and energy is the master resource when it comes to extracting minerals)? And, even more important, at what RATE? If I inherit a million dollars, but with the stipulation that I can only draw out $100 a week, I will be a millionaire, but I will never be able to live like one.
actually I am writing a piece for "Chemistry and Industry" about world metals shortages, which I may post an abridged version of, both here and on my blog: http://ergobalance.blogspot.com. That will be after it is published by C&I in August.
I agree, and have said so before, that it is the "rate of flow" that matters, rather than how much is down there. Lithium and also platinum are good examples of this and in the latter case a very narrow bottleneck is thus imposed on the likely proliferation of fuel-cells to "burn" hydrogen, in the far-way likelihood the latter technology will see the light of day full-scale compared to 0.7 x 30 billion barrels of oil a year.
I like your analogy of $ one million as a URR but a production rate of 0.01% ($100). Most of us will never live like millionaires!
Regards,
Chris.
Hope this sheds some light
Duncan
Will this be published somewhere?
So, if we take that range of 0.15 - 0.32 g/Wh, for a 9 kWh hybrid electric vehicle, that amounts to 1.35 - 2.9 kg of Li. In fact Tahil's figure of 2.38 kg for a 9 kWh car is smack in the middle of the range.
60 million new vehicles per year x 1.35 kg (using the lower part of the range) is about 100 million kg, or 100,000 tonnes per year, so while well down from some of the very high estimates quoted, still implies around five times the amount of lithium currently produced.
Again, it is a problem of rate of production rather than resource volume - as may be the case for other minerals and indeed oil
Chris.
We, at Umicore, have developed a recycling process for Li-ion batteries. The actual focus is on Co recovery, but the process can be adapted to recover Li as well.
I think that the price of lithium will rise along with the rising price of oil - I know it's cheap now, but that's only due to the economic downturn etc. and that currently there is no gap in demand and supply for oil; but that will follow.
The price of all mined and processed materials will increase over time, and for some metals, maybe lithium, certainly hafnium and indium, recycling will become paramount as the costs of recovering "new" metals soar.
Regards,
Chris.
http://www.trugroup.com/Lithium-Market-Conference.html
TRU Group Inc
All in all, the lack of transportation means a relocalisation of society and the sooner the world's governments acknowledge and confront this reality, the sooner we are on the way to a solution... if indeed there is one?
I have commented previously that if we had begun working seriously on oil-alternatives 30-odd years ago when the first "oil-shocks" hit the West in retaliation for its support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War , we would by now be in a better and more informed position to live without our dependence on oil.
However, cheap oil then came back onto the world markets and now we are completely oil-underpinned with chaos to ensue without cheap and plentiful provision of petroleum.
My final way of thinking is to look to the soil, i.e. permaculture and other kinds of regenerative agriculture... that is our way to salvation from this mess.
"Compared to existing technologies used in electric vehicles, the plan is to increase driving distance at least 5 to 10 times," for a given-size battery, says Thomas Weber, CEO of a subsidiary of BASF called BASF Future Business. Other experts say that a threefold improvement is a more reasonable estimate, but that would still be an impressive jump in performance. Weber says that BASF's expertise in materials will help Sion Power further improve its technology and bring it to market faster. He declined to provide details of the arrangement, however, including how much money is involved and how the companies will share any profits.
Lithium-sulfur batteries have one electrode made of lithium and another made of sulfur that is typically paired with carbon. As with lithium-ion batteries, charging and discharging the battery involves the movement of lithium ions between the two electrodes. But the theoretical capacity of lithium-sulfur batteries is higher than that of lithium-ion batteries because of the way the ions are assimilated at the electrodes. For example, at the sulfur electrode, each sulfur atom can host two lithium ions. Typically, in lithium-ion batteries, for every host atom, only 0.5 to 0.7 lithium ions can be accommodated, says Linda Nazar, a professor of chemistry at the University of Waterloo.
See - http://www.basf-futurebusiness.com/en.html
However, by what means are we going to charge these batteries?
In the United States, 85 percent of the energy consumed in 2007 was produced through the combustion of fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and petroleum . The remaining portion was supplied by nuclear electric power (8 percent) and by a variety of renewable energy sources (7 percent), primarily hydroelectric power and biofuels (EIA 2008a).
The process of generating electricity is the single largest source of CO2 emissions in the United States, representing 39 percent of total CO2 emissions from all CO2 emissions sources across the United States.
See - http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/usinventoryreport.html