• STEM 1 Monday, Oct 7, 2024 1st Assignment

    Please read the following article, then answer these questions – turn in to your sub today.

    1. What is lithium?
    2. What is lithium used for?
    3. What country has the monopoly on producing batteries?
    4. Write a constructed response using the RACES format answering the following question:

    “Do you think this new discovery will allow the US to break the monopoly that China has had in producing batteries?”

                     Cite this article using the author’s name. For example – “According to D. Garcia, …”

    ONCE you have finished this assignment, go to the 2nd Assignment which is accessed under STEM 1 Quarter 2!!!!!!!

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    The material that will bring China down, found in a lake: $40 billion and a new kind of energy

    by D. García    08/20/2024     in Energy

    energy, lithium America

    Credits: ecoticias.com

    America won the Space Race, but has lost the decisive one: China has swept us off our feet with this energy

    Around the world, there has been growing concern about lithium, a key resource for making the batteries that power cars with electric energy. Lithium extraction consumes water and produces pollution because it has to be transported to China where it is refined and processed to produce batteries. The US plans to change this by using geothermal energy to extract lithium.

    US vs China: another step against the lithium monopoly

    At present, the Asian giant accounts for 90% of the battery industry for electric cars. Although the most important lithium deposits are located in Argentina, Chile and Australia, transporting it to Asian countries involves high costs and large amounts of CO2.

    A possible source of lithium on the US-Mexico border

    The Salton Sea area on the US-Mexico border used to be a large lake that attracted thousands of tourists every year. It has now dried up to an increasingly uninhabited salt desert. A study from the University of California Riverside has found that this site could contain staggering amounts of lithium.

    There are already geothermal resources here that are exploited by 11 power plants that extract saltpetre from the ground to produce energy and inject it back into the ground in a continuous cycle. There is a possible solution to extract the lithium from the brine before it is injected back into the ground. This would be a pollution-free method of controlling the battery supply chain!

    To achieve this, they would have to invest about $1 billion for the facility, which would cost about $50 billion for each tonne of lithium mined initially. It would be more expensive in the short term, but, on the other hand, it would generate many jobs and its costs would be reduced in the long term, decarbonizing the extraction process.

    Experts advise caution: problems remain to be solved, but we have a huge opportunity

    Lithium extraction by means of geothermal energy is a completely new method that has not been tested on an industrial scale. The companies involved are developing plans to set up a pilot plant to see the process in operation, but the infrastructure for refining and manufacturing batteries only exists in Asia, so they will still have to get it there. This means that the lithium battery monopoly will remain in China’s possession for a few more decades.