China has found the treasure that humanity has been looking for for a century. There are 230,000 tons under the sea. A milestone that matches the energy that turns the Asian country into gold. The energy transition is already underway. The advance of global warming and climate change has accelerated the need to find new forms of supply that are more compassionate to the environment. In this global race, demand for critical materials such as lithium has increased.
While its extraction isn’t exactly 100% sustainable, it could be. This element is crucial for the production of batteries for electric vehicles, the most popular models that can take over the combustion components. It is also a great ally for renewable energy storage. With this wide range of applications, lithium is at the center of many research and technological innovations.
China is emerging as a world leader with a revolutionary approach. With the exponential increase in battery demand, especially in the transportation and clean energy sectors, lithium is becoming one of the most valuable resources. However, its traditional extraction is expensive and has serious environmental consequences because it uses salt flats and hard rock mines. In this context China has found the final solution to extract it from the sea without complicating the current environmental scenario.
China finds the most valuable treasure for humanity: we have been looking for it for centuries
China Now it extracts lithium from the sea without wasting energy, a discovery that could meet global demand. The oceans contain 230 billion tons of lithium, enough to meet global demand. Its low concentration and the presence of other ions make its extraction complex, but this new product promises to impose a new paradigm. To meet demand without increasing mining, China take refuge sea salt water.
Global demand for lithium is increasing almost exponentially as the industry scales up production of electric vehicles and batteries for renewable energy storage. The Asian country’s latest moves on the salt flats South America have strengthened their supply chain leadership, but conventional sources of lithium, such as hard rock minerals, will continue to decline in the coming years.
To ensure the supply of lithium in a sustainable way, a team of engineers from the Nanjing University, Chinahas developed a device that uses the sunlight to extract and store lithium from the brine. Traditional lithium extraction systems are expensive and harmful to the environment. This progress was calling STLES (solar transpiration powered lithium extraction and storage) It can extract lithium ions from salt solutions with moderate concentrations of the material, such as seawater, using only the sun’s energy.
The device floats on the surface of salt water and uses light to produce pressure in the capillaries of a solar evaporator. Inside is a membrane made of aluminum oxide and embedded nanoparticles that filters lithium from other materials.
China extracts lithium from the sea without wasting energy: the treasure humanity has been looking for
Using the sun’s energy as a pressure motor, the device forces lithium ions through the membrane, filtering them on a nanometric scale and separating them from other ions such as sodium, magnesium and calcium. The lithium ions are stored in another phase in a special layer in the device, ready to be collected.
By operating passively and using only solar energy, it becomes a very affordable system that could make the extraction of lithium from seawater more ecologically and economically feasible. This is how China has found the treasure humanity has been looking for under the sea. A significant progress that is in line with the alliance between the Asian country and Spain to bring the energy of the future.