{"id":123497,"date":"2021-06-07T09:22:38","date_gmt":"2021-06-07T16:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/new-tech-cheaply-produces-lithium-and-h2-while-desalinating-seawater"},"modified":"2021-06-07T09:22:38","modified_gmt":"2021-06-07T16:22:38","slug":"new-tech-cheaply-produces-lithium-and-h2-while-desalinating-seawater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/new-tech-cheaply-produces-lithium-and-h2-while-desalinating-seawater","title":{"rendered":"New tech cheaply produces lithium and H2, while desalinating seawater"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-tech-cheaply-produces-lithium-and-h2-while-desalinating-seawater.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>With the rise of the lithium-based battery, demand for this soft, silvery-white metal \u2013 the lightest solid element in the periodic table \u2013 has exploded. With the race to zero carbon by 2050 gathering steam, forcing the electrification of transport, lithium will be an even more valuable asset in the next 30 years.<\/p>\n<p>The supply of raw materials for batteries could even end up being a national security issue, too; China\u2019s global leadership on high-volume EV production has put it ahead of the game, and while the majority of ground-based lithium reserves are in the \u201clithium triangle\u201d of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.utilitydive.com\/news\/beating-china-at-the-lithium-game-can-the-us-secure-supplies-to-meet-its\/572307\/\" target=\"_blank\">China controls more than half\u2019s the world\u2019s supply<\/a> simply through investments and ownership. It has shown in the past that it\u2019s not afraid to wield commodity supplies as a weapon.<\/p>\n<p>But as with <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/newatlas.com\/nuclear-uranium-seawater-fibers\/55033\/\">other metals like uranium<\/a>, land-based lithium reserves pale in comparison to what\u2019s out there in the sea. According to researchers at Saudi Arabia\u2019s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), there\u2019s about 5000 times as much lithium in the oceans as there is in land deposits, and a newly developed technology could start extracting it cheaply enough to make the big time \u2013 while producing hydrogen gas, chorine gas and desalinated water as a bonus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the rise of the lithium-based battery, demand for this soft, silvery-white metal \u2013 the lightest solid element in the periodic table \u2013 has exploded. With the race to zero carbon by 2050 gathering steam, forcing the electrification of transport, lithium will be an even more valuable asset in the next 30 years. The supply [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":635,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1492,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-security","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/635"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}