Why Lithium Is Dangerous But PERFECT For Batteries

Our chemistry book has a diagram of a battery in the electrochemistry chapter, and I discuss that battery for a bit before explaining to my students that the basics of ACME (anode, cathode, metallic path, electrolyte) hold for every battery but that the engineering of modern lithium-ion batteries is far different from the diagram in the book.

This video - again leaning into the algorithm-rewarded longer and longer format - explains some battery basics involving the activity series, the history of the development of the lithium-ion battery, and the methods of fiery failure when the battery overheats.

This is, as Dr Derek says, a technology that has allowed our modern, battery-dependent world.

WaterLight - The clean energy revolution is here

I'm skeptical, I will admit it.

I want this light to work; I really do. But I also have to apply the Sagan standard to the light, and none of these videos or articles seem to provide that extraordinary evidence to me.

I keep coming back to the fact that the whole thing just sounds like a nicely engineered magnesium/copper cell with salt water (or urine) as the electrolytic path between the electrodes.

The magnesium electrode is going to run out. That's what anodes do.

Read more, please, and explain to me how I'm wrong. Sadly I haven't been able to find an actual schematic of the WaterLight anywhere.

• Dezeen article
• Inceptive Mind article
• Time article
• OurFutureEnergy article (that says pretty much what I say above)
• edina energy website (the WaterLight company - that seems to purport just shy of perpetual energy for zero cost)

High demand and prices for lithium send mines into overdrive

Source - NPR article

We need lithium.

We didn't used to need nearly as much lithium as we do now, and we're going to need way more lithium going forward because lithium is used to make pretty much every high tech battery - like those in electric vehicles. Those batteries need a whole lot of lithium.

I've posted about the one lithium mine in the United States and how it's running into conflicts with environmentalists over the destruction of habitat for Tiehm's buckwheat.

Today's article from NPR - which also has a 7-minute audio story in case you'd rather just listen to the story - shows some photos from the aforementioned Silver Peak mine in Nevada and explores other possible sources of lithium including seawater and geothermal power plant brine. Sadly they don't go into the reason lithium is so useful: its position at the top of the activity series and its relative low density making it a great way to store energy in small masses.

Why Rust Batteries May Be the Future of Energy - Iron Air Battery Technology

Rust! Un-rust! Rust! Un-rust!

Seems pretty simple...of course, the devil is in the details.

This video analyzes the possibility of an iron/air-based battery system for electricity storage, looking at where iron/air would be possible replacements as well as where they are not suitable replacements for lithium batteries.

Electric Vehicles' Battery Problem

"To replace the UK (not the UK) 31.5 million gasoline cars will require 236,000 tons of lithium carbonate." ~ quote from about 1:00 in the above video.

That would - again, according to the video - require all the world's output for 9 months.

And that metal comes from some countries with awful human rights records and workers' protections.

Then, if we mine the US's lithium, we have to use up water and leach arsenic into the water supply of Nevada...and dig into land holy to Native Americans...and destroy habitat for endangered animals.

It's the frickin' Kobayashi Maru, man.

Then we have to look at the cobalt mining.

To quote a magnet I got from the University of Utah, "what's your is mined," but clearly what's mined is bad for the planet and people.

2019 Nobel - lithium-ion batteries

Source: XKCD

That's not really what the 2019 Nobel prize in chemistry went to, but it would be funny if it had.

Instead, the 2019 Nobel prize went to a trio of scientists who developed the technology for lithium-ion batteries.