Ahhhhh hahahahah. Ahhhhhh HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
\nGas fracking for lithium production?
\nIn order for the US to meet its domestic lithium demand to power all of the electric vehicles we are going to be compelled to buy, we have to engage in natural gas fracking?
\nYOU CAN’T MAKE THIS IRONY UP.<\/p>\n
A Vast, Untapped Source of Lithium Has Just Been Found in The US<\/a><\/p>\n Almost two centuries after California’s gold rush, the United States is\u00a0on the brink<\/a>\u00a0of a lithium rush. As demand for the material skyrockets, government geologists are rushing to figure out where the precious element is hiding.<\/p>\n In September 2023, scientists funded by a mining company\u00a0reported finding\u00a0what could be the\u00a0largest deposit of lithium<\/a>\u00a0in an ancient US supervolcano. Now public researchers on the other side of the country have uncovered another untapped reservoir \u2013 one that could cover nearly half the nation’s lithium demands.<\/p>\n It’s hiding in wastewater from Pennsylvania’s gas fracking industry.<\/p>\n Lithium is arguably\u00a0the<\/i>\u00a0most important element in the nation’s renewable energy transition \u2013 the material of choice for\u00a0electric vehicle batteries<\/a>. And yet, there is\u00a0but one<\/a>\u00a0large-scale lithium mine in the US, meaning for the moment the country has to\u00a0import<\/a>\u00a0what it needs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Officials at the US Department of Energy are\u00a0desperate<\/a>\u00a0to change that. By 2030, they want all lithium\u00a0produced domestically<\/a>.<\/p>\n Expanding America’s lithium industry, however, is\u00a0highly controversial<\/a>, as mining can destroy natural environments, leach toxic chemicals, and intrude on sacred Indigenous land.<\/p>\n At the same time, however, lithium-ion batteries are considered a crucial technology in the world’s transition to renewable energy, storing electricity generated by the wind and the Sun. Finding a source of lithium that doesn’t cause more environmental destruction than necessary is key, but a clean solution is complicated.<\/p>\n Pennsylvania sits on a vein of sedimentary rock known as the\u00a0Marcellus Shale<\/a>, which is rich in natural gas. The geological foundation was deposited almost 400 million years ago by volcanic activity, and it contains lithium from volcanic ash.<\/p>\n Over vast stretches of time, deep groundwater has dissolved the lithium in these rocks, essentially “mining the subsurface”,\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to Justin Mackey, a researcher at the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n “We just didn’t know how much was in there,”\u00a0says<\/a>\u00a0Mackey.<\/p>\n Because of its location, Pennsylvania is a leading state in controversial fracking activities, which have spurred numerous\u00a0environmental and health concerns<\/a>.<\/p>\n Such practices could squander precious lithium. As this new study shows, in properly measuring lithium reserves in fracking wastewater, there could be another way to put the waste to good use.<\/p>\n The regional analysis is based on data from oil and gas companies, which report the elements found in their wastewater to government officials. Mackey and his colleagues considered data collected from 2012 to 2023 from the wastewater of 515 wells in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n Their results\u00a0suggest<\/a>\u00a0that the Marcellus Shale “has the capacity to provide significant lithium yields for the foreseeable future” \u2013 as long as fracking continues, that is.<\/p>\n If scientists can extract even a conservative amount of lithium from fracking wastewater in the state, they calculate it could meet more than 30 percent of the current US demand.<\/p>\n To fulfill our climate goals, global demand for lithium is expected to increase\u00a0by 400 percent<\/a>\u00a0in the coming decades. It remains to be seen how lithium requirements will be met and what\u00a0new environmental crises<\/a>\u00a0those solutions might wreak.<\/p>\n The study was published in\u00a0Scientific Reports<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ahhhhh hahahahah. Ahhhhhh HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! Gas fracking for lithium production? In order for the US to meet its domestic lithium demand to power all of the electric vehicles we are going to be compelled to buy, we have to engage in natural gas fracking? YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS IRONY UP. A Vast, Untapped Source of Lithium … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-econuts","category-you-cant-make-this-up"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101989"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101990,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101989\/revisions\/101990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}