h/t Gunga Din; They have to extract the gas to get to the Lithium…
Major lithium discovery in fracking wastewater leaves the left facing EV ‘irony’
One Democrat welcomed the news, calling it an opportunity for job creation and reduced reliance on China
By Charles Creitz Fox News
Published June 8, 2024 4:00am EDTThe discovery of the potential for thousands of tons of lithium to be extracted annually from wastewater generated by fracking in the Marcellus Shale leaves proponents of a green energy future at a crossroads, Republicans said Thursday.
A University of Pittsburgh study suggested processing byproducts from natural gas production in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale basin could potentially meet nearly half of U.S. lithium needs. The typical electric vehicle (EV) requires nearly 18 pounds of lithium to power its battery. That figure grows exponentially for Teslas, according to reports.
Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., who represents much of the Marcellus territory, told Fox News he wants to see those on the left change their tune.
“Now nearly 40% of our nation’s domestic need for lithium can be found right here as a byproduct of fracking,” he said. “I fully expect every single Democrat to join Republicans in supporting domestic natural gas development.”
…
“Fracking may provide the cleanest, most environmentally friendly way to produce natural gas energy and harvest the domestic lithium we need for the green future endorsed by my colleagues on the extreme left.”
…
Read more: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/major-lithium-discovery-fracking-wastewater-leaves-left-facing-ev-irony
Could this possibly get any funnier? If greens want to alleviate the Lithium crisis, to provide for their EV revolution, they need to support fracking natural gas in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale region.
Your move greens.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The left is against fracking. End of story.
That they’d sabotage their own goals to stick to their “principles” is a major way to define the Left.
That’s only because you (and in most cases they) don’t understand what their actual goal is…
Their problem wil be to identify which principle to sabotage – fracking or the need for lithium.
Most of them need lithium to control there anger outbursts, I suggest
Wales and wind?
It is all political, nothing to do with environmental goals.
Frack the left!
end of sanity
Karma?!
Karma sutra – they’ve fracked themselves
“Now nearly 40% of our nation’s domestic need for lithium can be found right here as a byproduct of fracking,”
That sounds just like all the excitement for the last twenty years about cheap, low-cost, reliable electricity from wind and solar. That excitement carefully hid all concerns about the costs and sacrifices necessary to make it work – which it still can’t do on account of lack of energy storage for extended periods of windless sunless days.
So let’s have those optimists with the ‘University of Pittsburgh Study’ explain just what we’d have to give up and just what we’d have to spend to achieve that glorious 40%. We’re from Missouri – show us!
As is my custom, did some quick research.
True, the Marcellus coproduced brine contains enough lithium to supply 40% of US needs per new Pennsylvania state estimates. The lithium comes from volcanism contemporaneous with the Marcellus shale formation. And that does present a funny potential green dilemma.
BUT depending on where in the Marcellus, the lithium content ranges between 127 and 205 mg/L. Today, with conventional brine evaporation production, a minimum of 500mg/L is needed. So uneconomic today compared to Chile Atacama desert brines—high lithium/L, very high evaporation rate.
Exxon is presently experimenting with three different possible direct lithium extraction techniques that could harvest Marcellus brine lithium, but the extraction% and economics are still unclear.
Given the brine is being produced anyway there would surely be no issue leaving it in an evaporation pond until it hit the required concentration? That’s a lot of lithium, even if the concentration is lower than normal.
There are new ion extraction methods to extract the Li directly. It an be first passed thru reverse osmosis membranes to ~triple the concentration.
Maybe collect the brine at higher latitudes then ship/pipe towards the equator where solar gain could be used in large evaporation reservoirs? Rube G. would love it!
“I fully expect every single Democrat to join Republicans in supporting domestic natural gas development.”
Dream on, the Donkey Party is fully behind economic progress… for China.
“The typical electric vehicle (EV) requires nearly 18 pounds of lithium to power its battery. That figure grows exponentially for Teslas, according to reports.”
Hmm. Yes. Well.
I’m all in favour of fracking and nuclear power. But, call me a pedant, two data points can be fitted to any exponential curve. And every other mathematical curve that quickly comes to mind. Excessive use of hyperbole quickly leads to the reader being unable to extract useful meaning from a piece of writing (from those reports).
Saw that too. Couldn’t have explained it so well. Thanks.
Fracking to a Green is like sacrificing babies to Satan, so they will reflexively oppose it.
There are a lot of people who consider abortion akin to making human sacrifices to Moloch. Given that many abortion enthusiasts also profoundly hate Christians and Roman Catholics, and since abortion is one way the Malthusian Greens approve in limiting human involvement with nature, giving in to the hyperbolic rhetoric, “sacrificing babies to Satan” is something the Greens overwhelming approve.
It’s becoming more and more obvious that the Left actually hates humans with a passion, and wants to exterminate them at the beginning of life, and near the end or during illness, and strives to stop them from reproducing.
The only positive of what you say, of which I am of the same opinion, is that leftist women are often not having children to then be raised as leftists.
That is a good thing.
Just because it’s there, that doesn’t mean it is cost effective.
There’s gold, uranium, and a bunch of other valuable stuff in seawater. Nobody extracts it because other sources are cheaper.
Supply and demand will determine whether or not it’s economical to extract the lithium.
China no longer has a quasi-monopoly on lithium.
(Sadly, this may give Brandon another reason to shut down fracking.)
PS: Fracking is good whether for gas or oil or, now, lithium.
There will be a demand for each.
It’s a waste product of fracking for oil and gas, and the water has to be dealt with anyway, and it’s already half the concentration required for a dedicated lithium plant, that doesn’t have the benefit of the natural gas produced.
It similar to the situation with Thorium – we might as well develop reactors for it as there is more than enough of it being produced as waste from production of rear earth metals.
Stop it, Stop it NOW. No common sense allowed.
Why would anyone want to maximize their profits?
Only crony capitalism and political power is important.
There are open veins of lithium and other rare earth minerals in the area I’m in.
The enviros have been against any mining and are currently active in legal battles
with a couple of major copper project at this time. I used to get some
interesting bits from a retired geologist that lived up the road
but has since retired and moved on. He had a pic on his phone
of him and a couple of other guys with boxes of legal papers from a copper
mine up in the Cabinets. Three stacks of boxes stacked shoulder high.
The present energy situation is like a Ken Kesey story from the 60’s.
A follow on factoid after more research. The known vast Salton Sea brine has a lithium content of 400 mg/L (so 2-3x Marcellus), and an overall brine composition suitable for direct lithium extraction (DLE) using the sorbent method currently in production in Argentina. Salton Sea is still not yet in production because the Argentina brine is 736 mg/L lithium.
Rud, Albemarle at Silver Peak, NV produced from brines running only 215ppm for decades. They have, in recent years expanded this by drilling some richer brine horizons and augmented Li analysis. Meanwhile, there is action on Li in the Salton.
https://www.enr.com/articles/58102-groundbreaking-lithium-extraction-plant-launches-in-california
10 years ago I developed a process for extracting lithium, potash and borates from altered volcanic ash beds in the Clayton Valley area NV. Both dilute sulphuric acid or sodium hydroxide worked to extract the values, the latter the best at ~95% for the Li.
The property, now owned by an Australian company is high up above the the Silver Peak Li brine operation and only a dozen miles from it. I believe there is a very broad area with potential. We sampled a number of salt flats over several 10s of mi² in the district and got some decent results. I remember a playa called fish lake as being a good grade in samples of surface dry material and volcanic ash.
I’ve often thought a good regional survey would get results, but I’m 86 now so not much I can do but perhaps advise on exploration and process dev.
One Democrat welcomed the news
Senator Casey will soon be ostracized or re-educated by his “inclusive” party.
The shales of western Pennsylvania are also noted for Radon that seeps into the basements. Many earlier houses had dug/unfinished basements. Cancer has been a known health risk ‘like’ forever. Ask me how I know.
Actually, the radon is not from the Marcellus. It is from the decay of uranium in overlying granites. A big problem in about 40% of the state, with mandatory basement radon testing and mitigation.
So, NY is against lithium and EVs with policy run by the esteemed scientist Yoko.
Interestingly, another dimension to add heartburn to the greens is that the cheapest way to recover the lithium in from the water is to bubble in CO2, either industrial compressed gas, or extract your own CO2 from the atmosphere. The solid precipitate is Li2CO3 (lithium carbonate) which happens to be a battery chemical!
Also, I am the primary iinventor of an industrial process for producing Lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide (also a battery chemical), plus others for separating the 17 rare earth elements from one another.
https://www.patentsencyclopedia.com/inventor/pearse-6/
Scroll down to the ” third Pearse”
It is not a dilemma for the green blob. Their main purpose is to cull a vast swath of humanity and subjugate the rest.
Anyone know how to reclaim the lithium from all those EVs?
Until there is a way to recycle them, I would rather there was less production of the neurotoxin.
FJB
All good points.
We should get busy fracking because we need the energy. If some want to process the waste water to recover lithium I am all for it. I wouldn’t use the lithium for EVs here in the states rather I would sell it to the Europeans for a profit. We don’t need no stinking EVs.
After reading this article I’m starting to believe there is a god and that this deity has a sense of humour.
God is bipolar, in my opinion.
We need some Devine Intervention.
“If greens want to alleviate the Lithium crisis, to provide for their EV revolution, they need to support fracking natural gas…”
But of course they won’t. And not just in PA. There’s a great deal in NY too.
To get lithium requires some form of mining, and as far as I know, all forms of mining are dirty. Greens only see the end product and apparently think wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries are made from pixie dust and unicorn farts – they never look at the full life cycle.
Oops. The consensus says….????
We do need lithium. But mostly to treat those afflicted with AGW psychosis or TDS.