With EV incentives tied to domestic battery content, US lithium mines are needed.
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Exxon will mine lithium for electric vehicle batteries in Arkansas
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Arkansas is beautiful. The Ozarks and the Ouachita Mountains, in particular, are stunning places with unique flora and fauna. Great hikes and vistas too.
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Good. Use all three major sites in the US, and maybe that one in Canada. And thank you IRA Act for local processing and battery factory construction.
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Finally a good use for Exxon too!
If we can convert these carbon extraction corporations to making big money on extracting resources that are helpful in reducing climate change rather than exacerbating it, that would be promising for actually hitting some targets, which we are clearly failing to do right now.
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Equipment used for the transfer and processing of corrosive substances isn't exactly unicorn status. It's all quite mature in equipment availability and process procedures.
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"but working with the corrosive brine has proven extremely challenging to industrial equipment."
I'd be interested to know more about the details on this aspect - just from a layman perspective, this sounds like a materials problems - if the brine is corrosive to one material, maybe use a different material to make the equipment? Although, perhaps certain equipment is hard to make from other materials? I presume that if they could just use other materials, they would, so there must be some reason they can't.
But, just as an example, seems like maybe pipes, tanks, boilers, vats, etc could be made from something like a ceramic or plastic that would be impervious to the brine?
I certainly don't have any expertise in this area, so an article on the challenges they face and why it's hard to solve would be very interesting and educational.
I'd be interested to know more about the details on this aspect - just from a layman perspective, this sounds like a materials problems - if the brine is corrosive to one material, maybe use a different material to make the equipment? Although, perhaps certain equipment is hard to make from other materials? I presume that if they could just use other materials, they would, so there must be some reason they can't.
But, just as an example, seems like maybe pipes, tanks, boilers, vats, etc could be made from something like a ceramic or plastic that would be impervious to the brine?
I certainly don't have any expertise in this area, so an article on the challenges they face and why it's hard to solve would be very interesting and educational.
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Some down voter doesn't like the IRA Act or acknowledging Biden did something useful, unlike a prior president.
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Do we know how Exxon is extracting the Lithium? I'm assuming they have some chemistry to precipitate it out if they aren't evaporating it. It would be good to know what they are adding before they pump it all back down underground. The contamination potential is worrying especially when you are pumping things back into the ground.
I suppose they get to keep it all a secret until well after it blows up in our faces.
I suppose they get to keep it all a secret until well after it blows up in our faces.
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And Exxon doesn't have a great track record on fracking, to which this sounds somewhat similar. Like in Oklahoma, it is going to lead to unintended consequences.
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Austenitic stainless steels are highly corrosion resistive. I'm sure similar materials are already in use in processing caustic materials and such, at least the application I'm familiar with.
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The claim that this will have "far fewer environmental impacts than traditional mining operations" makes me a bit suspicious that the opposite is true, coming from Exxon, but I guess we won't know for sure for another 20-50 years.
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Thanks for the coverage.
Economically extracting this stuff is messy ... and tricky.
Within the US, Compass Minerals has a lithium source - actually: lithium brine - at their Utah site in Ogden. Compass announced suspension of their operation "...pending regulatory clarity."
As to Exxon's experience with environmental issues in Mayflower, Arkansas, do your own web search for the March 2013 Pegasus pipeline spill.
Economically extracting this stuff is messy ... and tricky.
Within the US, Compass Minerals has a lithium source - actually: lithium brine - at their Utah site in Ogden. Compass announced suspension of their operation "...pending regulatory clarity."
As to Exxon's experience with environmental issues in Mayflower, Arkansas, do your own web search for the March 2013 Pegasus pipeline spill.
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I do hear some unicorn pitches how some small company's new membrane tech will suddenly revolutionize it. Though I did see some papers last month specifically about electrodialysis for lithium extraction. Other than that, I just assume they mean "challenging" to be "not profitable [enough]."
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In the US Navy, our radars were cooled by heat transfer with sea water. To help with the corrosion we had "Zincs" in our heat exchangers that would basically get destroyed by the salt water and had to be replaced periodically (monthly, if I recall).
This site has a wonderful description of it: https://www.marinedieselbasics.com/marine-diesel-maintenance-drawings/marine-heat-exchanger-anode/
So ya, I agree, not really unicorn status!
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Yeah, but a name does NOT indicate what they actually DO.
The corporate world is rife with corporations possessed of names that are the opposite of what they do.
Creating a do-nothing department for PR's sake is not an uncommon practice among the carbon extraction industry.
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There have been studies which show some stainless steel alloys are resistant to Salton Sea water while others show varying levels of corrosion, from intergranular damage to visible pitting. Any company interested would need to build the entire system with those limits in mind plus the lead times on highly corrosion resistant alloys.
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I was around for those earthquakes. Homes were damaged all over the state. Cheaply rented state legislators didn't care until their capital building was literally crumbling in on them and disrupting proceedings.
Oil companies generated obscene wealth by destroying the biosphere. Should we allow them to use that obscene wealth to control the solutions to the problems they created? Subsidized, again, no less...
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Don't forget the MKARNS, one of the prettiest canal systems in the US!
This is very different from fracking.
In fracking, a fluid is pumped into a shale layer to create cracks and increase permeability. The allows the production of hydrocarbons and the associated brine. However, because of the low permeability of shale, the produced water has to be pumped down into a second, lower layer. This increases pore pressure in the second layer which allows the triggering of earthquakes.
What this does is pump the brine up from a sandstone layer, extract a minuscule part of the material, and pump the brine right back down into the original layer. Provided the rates are properly managed, there won't be any changes in pore pressure and there is no way for the reinjection to trigger earthquakes.
ETA: "produced" to make it clear that the water being injected is the water that is produced during hydrocarbon extraction and not the frack fluid (which is typically kept in a pond and carted off for disposal in another well).
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Those two words in the sub-head are going to be responsible for some really unexpected Google search results.
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The best part of this is that we're seeing these being built in the US in a far more environmentally friendly methods, without the large amounts of water use that evaporation pool require.
This is what happens when you vote Democrats into office. It may not be as much as Biden wanted done, but it is a huge step.
This is what happens when you vote Democrats into office. It may not be as much as Biden wanted done, but it is a huge step.
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Fun fact: eating food is linked to obesity. Another fun fact: not eating food is linked to starvation. Both will kill you, but one is way the fuck quicker about it.
Maybe try to keep some perspective instead of injecting nonsense scarmongering into a discussion.
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They are claiming a positive spin off of something they were forced to do by US environmental regulations. They'd almost certainly be using traditional mining methods if we allowed them to.
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Let's wait to see what the site eventually looks like. Arkansas has gone hard-right since Clinton was president, with the current Governor having recently signed legislation to allow children to work in meat-packing plants. So we could very easily wind up with a mountain-top removal strip mine run entirely by children.
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While I'd hope that whatever is going back in the ground isn't anything terribly toxic, I'm not too worried about it, either. Deep brine reservoirs (at least those in Arkansas) don't really communicate with the outside environment. They exist below a capping layer that keeps them (and the oil and gas) isolated from the surface.
The bigger issue is making sure that the wells are constructed properly and old wells that already exist are properly plugged when abandoned, as our penetrations are where contamination risk comes from. It's all too easy to ruin freshwater aquifers even if the only thing you're pumping downhole is sunshine and rainbows.
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Any word on who is making the extraction pumps? Hoping EnergyX but sounds almost like Exxon is doing it themselves
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ColdWetDog
Ars Legatus Legionis
But it is expensive in terms of equipment maintenance. If there are better procedures then that’s a good thing. Hard to tell if this Exxon system will actually be cheaper and more environmentally sound but we need to start putting our money down and taking our chances real soon now (like 30 years ago but oh well…)
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ColdWetDog
Ars Legatus Legionis
That is for electrolytic degradation. Salt water ~ especially at high temperatures and pressures ~ can cause direct chemical damage. So these plants will likely have sacrificial anodes or the more modern systems where they impress a countervailing current but you have to chose your metal alloys and processes carefully.
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The things I stated are also facts, and are exactly as relevant and real and serious as yours. What matters it how those facts fit into the bigger picture, which is that fossil fuel extraction and use kills exponentially more people than lithium extraction and use ever will, just as starvation has killed more people than obesity.
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That seems to be in response to a law imposing a tax on minerals from the Great Salt Lake that had not been extracted prior to 2020. In other words, targeted at lithium while protecting existing operations.
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Talking in very broad generalities here:
Ceramics as a class are generally too brittle. One small crack and your reactor vessel goes boom (literally). They're also difficult to make in very large assemblies.
Polymers can be made in large sections and are tough, but often too weak and susceptible to multiple forms of degradation at modest reaction temperatures and pressures.
Stainless steels (and I'm generalizing here, because there are many, many types...) are a bit of a middle ground. Not as chemically inert as certain polymers or ceramics, but we can make them in very large sections (thanks to welding), they're fairly temperature stable (in the grand spectrum of things), they're strong enough to handle both static and dynamic pressures, and tough enough that a crack won't make them go boom if they are designed properly (leak before burst criterion) and routinely inspected.
Also, it could be that lithium brine is more corrosive than sodium brine. That part I'm entirely unsure of.
<--Metallurgist
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I've had so many conversations with people that want to whine about China's heavy involvement in lithium ion batteries used in electric vehicles, but refuse to give any credit for actions taken by the current administration to encourage US production of EV materials and parts. Mind you they never have any actual solutions of their own for this issue; it's just a right wing talking point and they're incapable of doing anything more than regurgitating it.
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