http://lithiumabundance.blogspot.com/

I would correct demonstrated with claimed, which make a lot of difference

http://www.meridian-int-res.com/Projects/L…m_Problem_2.pdf

On page 12 of this report he states; “Existing LiIon/LiMP “Energy Batteries” for EVs require about 0.3kg of Lithium metal equivalent per kWh, in the form of Lithium Carbonate.” He then continues in this paper to state that it takes 1.4kg/kWh of Lithium Carbonate Li2CO3 to build each kilowatt hour of an EV battery. This premise is completely in error & I show why below.

Saft, which is one of best known, most respected & oldest Lithium Ion battery manufacturers in the world publishes the ‘lithium content’ of their Li-Ion batteries.

Let’s take a look at some Saft Li-Ion rechargeable batteries that use lithium carbonate in their makeup. One can open the following Link & navigate down to their ‘Lithium – ion batteries’ to confirm the figures I post below:

http://www.saftbatteries.com//140-general/80-20_download.asp

If you click on the ‘MP 176065’ as provided in the following link:

http://www.saftbatteries.com//130-Catalogu…F/mp_176065.pdf

You will see that this Li-ion battery is rated as follows:

Nominal voltage: 3.75 Volts

Capacity: 6.8 Ah

Lithium equivalent content: 2.0 g

Nominal energy: 26 Wh

Now let’s do the math for everyone to see:

1kWh or 1,000Wh / 26Wh = 38.46 of these batteries to make 1kWh

38.46 Saft MP 176065 batteries X 2.0g Lithium equivalent each = 76.92g of lithium equivalent

If you add up the molecular weight of lithium carbonate (Li2CO3) & then figure what the percentage of lithium is, you find that lithium makes up 18.8% or .188 of Li2CO3.

76.92 / .188 = 409.15g of Lithium Carbonate in 1kWh of this Saft Li-ion battery.

This is only 0.409kg/kWh — NOT 1.4kg/kWh, Mr. Tahil’s basis for this article.

0.409kg/kWh is extremely close to the figure (0.431) that the UN & the US-DOT & several Li-Ion battery companies tell us we need to use when determining the lithium content of a Li-ion battery. They are having us figure a little high for transportation safety reasons.

Go ahead and open the other data sheets for the other Saft Li-ion batteries & do the analysis on each battery displaying the Lithium contents. They all fall in at around 0.409kg to 0.426kg per kWh which is extremely close to the 0.431kg/kWh as stated in an above commentary.

This means that we can build in excess of 1.5 Billion PHEV20 (more than 2 X all the world’s current vehicles) & use only 5,799,918 tonnes of Li2CO3. The USGS tells us in a 2000 study that we have 12,000,000 tonnes of Li2CO3 …. HOWEVER, Lithium can be & is being recycled from Li-Ion batteries. See TOXCO @:

http://www.toxco.com/processes.html

As can be seen, lithium is quite recyclable so, in reality we won’t even begin to approach using up half the world’s reserves by the time we have gotten around to building 1.5 billion PHEV vehicles; if we EVER make that many. It is estimated that the whole world only has 0.6 billion vehicles today.

Wayne Brown — http://privatenrg.com

I’m struck by the fact that historical prices of lithium carbonate have been about $1/kilo, roughly the amount needed per kwh li-ion battery capacity. That’s .25% of current battery costs of $400/kwh (per Tesla), which isn’t much. The article suggests that spot prices recently have been $10/kilo.

This deserves research, but another poster suggested that lithium has gotten little serious prospecting (perhaps due to low prices), that it’s a relatively abundant element and that it’s available from many similar salt-flats elsewhere which have received little attention. We may have our perspective warped by peak oil, where oil has been intensively explored for over 100 years. Do we have real reason to believe that reserves are this limited?

Look at polysilicon – it’s prices have jumped due to delays in ramping up production, yet this increase will be temporary due to the abundance of silicon….think sand.

This analysis makes a lot of silly assumptions, such as that commodity prices have jumped recently due to peak oil. That’s not the case – in fact it’s a temporary increase across the board due in large part to China’s demand outstripping current capacity. Another mistake is to estimate long-term large-scale li-ion production costs at around $400/kwh: in fact, that’s where they are right now, according to Tesla’s report on their purchasing costs.

Finally, I’m curious why the Firefly battery was not included in the analysis. This report is recent enough to include the Chevy Volt – why not Firefly?

It will take at least 5 years to get to this level of production. That’s an increase in demand of about 15% per year, which any mining company worth it’s salt (pun intended) ought to be able to keep up with.

Mining companies will have plenty of notice of automotive capacity expansion. Do you believe that current production would be hard to expand, given proper notice?

A jump in costs is perfectly normal in this kind of situation, which is repeated often in various commodity markets – polysilicon is an obvious example. The important question: is there any reason to believe the price increase will not end when supply catches up with demand, as is the usual pattern?

I see there’s been some active debate on the Lithium issue.

We need realism, not faith. Our strategy must be based on sound, reliable information, based on what we know not on what we do not. Our strategy must take into account environmental considerations and be environmentally sound. Recycling a substance such as zinc which is already widely available performs a useful recycling task, it’s cheap and it works; opening up new mining in some of the planet’s remaining ecologically important areas for a substance which is at best insufficient to meet anything like the demand which the automobile industry needs is not sound thinking or planning in any shape or form. We all have a responsibility to not fall into the same traps as those of the past.

I just ran the numbers and there are enough proven reserves of Lithium (10 million tons) to power 2.6 billion plug in hybrid cars. Also, keep in mind that unlike oil, Lithium is completely recyclable which allows you to re-use that Lithium. The guy quoted in the article from Meridian International Research (Mr. William Tahil) is a “conspiracy theorist for hire”. Below is a link to some of his other crazy work such as claiming 911 was caused by an underground nuclear blast.

The 10 million tons figure is the same as that cited by Tahil, I believe, so they’re all working with the same numbers. They differ in their analysis of how much lithium would be required for plug-in hybrids. Fulop doesn’t back up his comment that Tahil is a “conspiracy theorist for hire” — quite the cheap shot to make without proof. Anyway, if Mr. Tahil is reading this, perhaps he can provide a link to his report or give me permission to upload the version I have. Then those critical of his conclusions can find out how he came to them.