by Historical_Job_8609
electrek.co/2022/04/11/tesla-lithium-mining-business-price-surge/
For those who don’t remember, two years ago Musk and Tesla announced his easy it was to extract lithium from clay and salt and a revolutionary new process at its 2020 battery day. Allegedly 10,000 acres of property rights in Nevada were bought (no-one has ever seen public land registry relating).
Even though Geo-chemists from established Lithium miners were unable to perform such alchemy, Musk was going to of course. Yet here we are again, with Musk talking up Tesla’s entry into Lithium mining.
At least it seems some in the media are finally at least keeping track of the embellishments and hype, if not directly daring to cite the B/S.
Anyone who has actually done a little homework on Lithium mining will know, contrary to popular media reports, that many far better informed Geo-chemists have tried and failed similar techniques that Musk is citing as far back as the 1920’s. To get the salt to react with the lithium silicates requires heating it to 1,000 degrees centigrade. The energy required makes it ridiculously uneconomical versus traditional brine extraction processes.
The Pied Piper continues to play his tunes.