Comment on Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

• LordKitsuna@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Desalination of water is basically an endless supply of salt, we can’t just push it back into the ocean because that increases the salt concentration in the ocean which is actually not great and when done at scale. But we didn’t really have anywhere else to put the salt because there’s already an abundance of it for use elsewhere but if we start using salt for Batteries it would be a great place for salt from desalination to go

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  • roguetrick@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    can’t just push it back into the ocean because that increases the salt concentration in the ocean which is actually not great and when done at scale

    Only locally, it’s absolutely not a problem globally. That water will go back into the ocean soon enough. We’re not generally putting wastewater in aquifers. The same is true of lithium. Both sodium and lithium dissolve in water, so over time their biggest concentration is in the water and that’s why we refine it from salt flats.

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    • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Only locally

      You make that sound like it isn’t an issue. Massive ocean die-offs in a localized area is still a very bad thing.

      There’s a reason why oil spills are treated with such seriousness. Globally, an oil spill is also not a problem.

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      • roguetrick@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        It depends on how local we’re talking about. If you build a pipe out of the littoral zone with multiple outputs you likely wouldn’t kill much of anything but a few plankton. The intake pipe is often worse than the output pipe for wildlife.

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  • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Desalination is also a good way of getting lithium right now, it’s just a bit less cost effective than surface mining dried oceans currently. Maybe if sodium demand also goes up, it’ll be effective to capture desalination salts for both lithium and sodium.

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  • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    that increases the salt concentration in the ocean which is actually not great and when done at scale.

    I dealt with CaSO4 (calcium-sulfur salt) dumping before. It is considered fine (by DNV) as long as it not in brackish waters or too close to the shore or in most of the North Sea. It’s just adding salt to salt water, salt is supposed to go there.

    I guess if you were doing it at insane scales it would be best to run a pipeline out, run your seapumps harder, or have ships do the dumping. Not sure.

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