Dec 29 2008

Peak Lithium?

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

The United States has yet to see its first mass production electric vehicle, but already critics are warning that the world may run short of lithium, the metallic element at the heart of the next generation of automotive batteries.

If you believe them, the looming crisis of "peak oil" will soon have a counterpart in "peak lithium," as demand from the consumer electronics sector and plug-in vehicles converges to overwhelm limited supplies of the Periodic Table's third element. (The nuclear industry faces similar skeptics who claim that uranium supplies have peaked.) 

Lithium battery technology is prized because it stores tremendous amounts of energy relative to its light weight--unlike, say, traditional lead acid batteries. The Chevy Volt is expected to sport a 400-pound lithium-ion battery capable of giving the car a 40 mile range without any assist from its gasoline engine.

Lithium is typically found in granitic minerals, hectorite clay, and in desert brine deposits. The world's biggest producer is Chile, whose brine-fed, high desert Salar de Atacama region holds more than a quarter of the world's lithium reserves. Bolivia holds what may be the largest untapped reserve of lithium at the Uyuni salt flats. Other major producers include China, the United States and Russia.

Concerns over the adequacy of world lithium reserves first surfaced in the mid-1970s, when advocates of fusion power wondered if their miracle cure for the energy crisis would be foiled by shortages of the element. (Lithium deuteride was a key to the ignition of the first hydrogen fusion bomb.)  A panel subsequently convened by the National Research Council estimated world reserves of lithium at less than 11 million tonnes--but the potential crisis fizzled along with fusion power. 

The latest alarm was sounded by William Tahil, research director of Meridian International Research, His December 2006 paper, "The Trouble with Lithium," concluded, "there is insufficient lithium available in the Earth's crust to sustain electric vehicle manufacture in the volumes required, based solely on LiIon batteries. Depletion rates would exceed current oil depletion rates and switch dependency from one diminishing resource to another. Concentration of supply would create new geopolitical tensions, not reduce them."

In a followup paper this year, Tahil stressed the disastrous environmental impact of ramping up lithium production. Bolivia's Uyuni salt flat, he noted, "is the brightest object on the Earth's surface visible from space," a popular tourist destination and a major flamingo breeding ground, making it an unlikely savior of the lithium battery industry.

Lithium optimists have a champion in Keith Evans, a geologist who has specialized in the element for forty years. He maintains that world reserves of elemental lithium are today more than twice the estimate in 1976, despite growing production.

The electric vehicle market might double demand by 2015, Evans notes, but modest price increases would make huge untapped reserves economic, ending any threat of shortages. "A rise (in price) from the current levels is probably necessary but the cost of (lithium) carbonate in batteries is a very small percentage of the battery cost," he declared in a reply to Tahil.

So who's right? One way for non-experts to decide is to watch the money. GM, as noted, is banking on lithium batteries. So is Nissan, which reportedly plans to invest a billion dollars with NEC to produce lithium-ion batteries for the vehicle market. Honda reportedly plans to produce as many as 500,000 lithium-ion batteries a year. They must know something.

But then there's Toyota, the world's most experienced manufacturer of hybrid vehicles. Toyota uses nickel-metal hydride batteries in the Prius and doesn't see much future in lithium. "The future supply of lithium will not be able to sustain both the exponential growth in batteries for consumer electronics and a large automotive battery demand," said Jaycie Chitwood, environmental strategy manager for Toyota's advanced technology group.

So which camp are you in--peak lithium, or peak optimism?

 

 

 

 

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