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A Huge American Lithium Discovery | Earth Wise

October 12, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Human history has often been described in terms of a succession of metal ages: the copper age, the bronze age, and the iron age. In many ways, we have now entered the lithium age. The light metal goes into the batteries that power smartphones, electric vehicles, and massive storage banks for the power grid. Lithium has become a critical strategic resource.

As it stands now, the U.S. gets most of its lithium from imports from Australia and South America. Major lithium sources are not commonplace; in 2022 there were only 45 lithium mines in the world. Many of the known deposits are not in North America but in Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, China, and Australia. The current largest known lithium deposits lie beneath the salt flats of Bolivia.

Lithium Americas Corporation, a company dedicated to advancing lithium projects to the stage of production, funded research over the past decade that has identified vast deposits of lithium-rich clay in a dormant volcanic crater along the Nevada-Oregon border. The McDermitt Caldera is estimated to hold between 20 and 40 million tons of lithium, which would make it the largest deposit in the world.

There are many questions still to answer. It is not clear how easy it will be to extract lithium from the clay, in particular how expensive or carbon-intensive it will be. There are also political complexities since the area where the lithium deposit was found is considered to be unceded ancestral land for both the Paiute and Shoshone tribes.

Apart from a dearth of domestic sources of lithium, the US also lags well behind China in lithium processing capabilities. The country has catching up to do in the new lithium age.

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America Just Hit the Lithium Jackpot

Photo, posted April 19, 2020, courtesy of Ken Lund via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Rare Earths And The Energy Transition | Earth Wise

May 19, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Limiting the rise in global temperature to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius requires decarbonization. This means slashing fossil fuel use, switching to renewable energy sources, and electrifying as many sectors of the economy as possible. Doing these things requires huge numbers of wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles, and storage batteries. All of them use rare earth elements and other critical metals.

The 17 rare earth elements are actually common, but they are called rare because they are seldom found in sufficient quantities to be extracted easily or economically.

China once supplied 97% of the world’s rare earth elements as a result of government support, cheap labor, lax environmental regulations, and low prices. Once the world started to realize the dangers of being so dependent on China, many countries began developing their own rare earth element production. (However, today China still produces 60-70% of the world’s rare earth elements).

It is difficult to mine rare earth elements without causing environmental damage. The prevalent extraction techniques involve toxic chemicals that can leach into the environment and, because rare earths are often found near radioactive elements, mining often brings dangerous radioactive waste into the environment.

Researchers are working on ways to make rare earth mining more sustainable. Some of these include biomining – which uses microbes to extract rare earths from ores, electrical methods to free rare earths from ores, and so-called agromining, which is growing plants that hyperaccumulate rare earths from the soil into their tissues.

Making rare earth mining more sustainable and less harmful to the environment is an essential part of the world’s future.

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The Energy Transition Will Need More Rare Earth Elements. Can We Secure Them Sustainably?

Photo, posted November 18, 2008, courtesy of the Oregon Department of Transportation via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Removing Lead From Water With Beer Yeast | Earth Wise

July 14, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Lead and other heavy metals in water are a serious global problem that is worsening because of electronic waste and discharges from mining operations. In the U.S., over 12,000 miles of waterways are impacted by mine-drainage water that is rich in heavy metals.

Lead in particular is highly toxic, especially to children. The European Union established a standard for allowable lead in drinking water of only 5 parts per billion. In the US, the EPA has declared that no level of lead at all is safe.

Researchers at MIT have recently discovered that inactive yeast can be effective as an inexpensive, abundant, and simple material for removing lead contamination from drinking water supplies. The MIT study shows that the method works even at parts-per-billion levels of contamination.

The method is called biosorption, in which inactive biological material is used to remove heavy metals from water. Previously, it has been studied at parts-per-million contaminant levels, but the MIT study shows that it works at much lower levels as well.

The team studied a type of yeast widely used in brewing. The yeast cells used are inactive and desiccated and require no special care. Such yeast is abundantly available as a waste product from beer brewing and various other fermentation-based industrial processes.

The researchers estimate that to clean a water supply for a city the size of Boston would require about 20 tons of yeast a day, or 7,000 tons a year. That seems like a lot, but one single brewery, the Boston Beer Company, generates 20,000 tons a year of surplus yeast that is no longer useful for fermentation.

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Could used beer yeast be the solution to heavy metal contamination in water?

Photo, posted September 5, 2017, courtesy of Allagash Brewing via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Largest Floating Solar Power Plant

July 17, 2017 By EarthWise

The world’s largest floating solar power plant is now operational and connected to the electric grid in China. It is a 40-megawatt facility and floats in water 13 to 30 feet deep in a lake that was created by a former mining operation.

Solar Power From An Old Mine

May 8, 2017 By EarthWise

For more than a century, a wide stretch of land north of Kimberley, British Columbia, was used for intensive industrial hard-rock mining. The site of Teck’s Sullivan Mine hosted a steel mill, a fertilizer plant and tailings ponds and was rendered treeless.

Old Dog, New Trick

May 2, 2017 By EarthWise

The North-Rhine Westphalia region of Germany was the crucible of that country’s industrial revolution and it still generates a third of Germany’s power, much of it using aging coal plants. However, Germany’s national energy transition program is pushing the country away from coal and other fossil fuels and towards renewable energy sources.

[Read more…] about Old Dog, New Trick

Storing Energy In An Old Mine

January 20, 2017 By EarthWise

An abandoned, centuries-old iron mine in the Adirondacks about 100 miles north of Albany, New York may become the site of a new hydroelectric energy storage system. The mine in the tiny hamlet of Mineville near Moriah, New York contributed iron for the first naval battle of the Revolutionary War that took place on Lake Champlain. The mine hasn’t been used in over 45 years.