Discoveries and inventions

[Rick Potter]

Have you ever noticed how sometimes, seemingly unsolvable problems seem to lessen because of a timely invention or discovery? Like maybe polio vaccine, penicillin or the Aids Cocktail, and like the cotton gin, or steam power?

In the discovery category, we have a new entrant. With the rise of the electric cars and such....it was just announced on an investment program that they have discovered a Lithium deposit larger than Australia's, in Canada, North of Quebec. Large investments are already starting.

Seems to me this should lessen some of the concerns about getting it from Africa and China.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

There is a long boring Indy film about life in and around the lithium salt flats in Bolivia or Argentina. I thought most of the Lithium salts came from South America.

That film seems to have disappeared from the web. It may have been in Chile. It follows an ancient hermit person trying to survive in a desolate place. There is almost no dialogue. The continuous loading and trucking of salt in the background stretches off to the horizon, a seemingly endless sea of salt, many feet deep.

[Larry Frank]

The McDermitt Caldera on the border of Nevada and Oregon is a huge lithium deposit. The EV batteries also need a lot of graphite and a new mine in Alaska is opening.

[Stan Calow]

I thought I read that they had also discovered large deposits in California, in the Salton Sea area.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

I thought I read that they had also discovered large deposits in California, in the Salton Sea area.

The farmer with his plow that punctured the gas main near Pullman Washington had me thinking of the Salton Sea yesterday. If I remember the story correctly, another farmer doing a little digging, accidentally diverted the Colorado river creating the Salton Sea.

[Pat Germain]

The farmer with his plow that punctured the gas main near Pullman Washington had me thinking of the Salton Sea yesterday. If I remember the story correctly, another farmer doing a little digging, accidentally diverted the Colorado river creating the Salton Sea.

It was the Army Corps of Engineers who created the Salton Sea. It's now saltier than the ocean and the whole area is a toxic mess. But yeah, there are MASSIVE deposits of lithium in that area and efforts are already underway to extract them.

The narrative that most or all lithium for EV batteries comes from Chinese strip mines is completely false. As mentioned above, most of lithium currently comes from South America.

[Doug Garson]

Interesting data, some studies report the price of EV batteries using lithium ion technology has dropped almost 90% from $1355/ kWh in 2008 to $153/kWh in 2022 and is predicted to drop an additional 40% to $99 kWh by 2025 and another 40% to around $58/kWh by 2030. Another study reports the cost of the battery for an EV in 2016 was about 49% of the total EV cost and will drop to about 19% by 2030.

[Kent A Bathurst]

Interesting data, some studies report the price of EV batteries using lithium ion technology has dropped almost 90% from $1355/ kWh in 2008 to $153/kWh in 2022 and is predicted to drop an additional 40% to $99 kWh by 2025 and another 40% to around $58/kWh by 2030. Another study reports the cost of the battery for an EV in 2016 was about 49% of the total EV cost and will drop to about 19% by 2030.

Yeah, and if Toyota [and others] deliver on their solid-state batteries the price of lithium ion batteries for autos goes to zero. The massive new lithium deposits will remain barely touched, if at all.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lauriew...h=1bae2e11592c

Tech advances astound - continually. My Kansas grandfather farmers used to tell me about seeing the first tractors on farms. And they lived to see Neil Armstrong live on TV from the moon.

[Doug Garson]

I can still remember several decades ago we visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The director at that time had witnessed the second Wright brothers flight in person and watched the first man to walk on the moon on TV.
In my working career, I went from using a slide rule to a laptop.

Don't think the Toyota solid state battery will reduce demand for lithium, they still use lithium, the difference is they don't use a liquid electrolyte. "Long seen as a potential game-changer for BEVs, Toyota has made a technological breakthrough in its quest to improve the durability of Li-Ion solid-state batteries."
https://newsroom.toyota.eu/toyotas-a...e%20batteries.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

I can still remember several decades ago we visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The director at that time had witnessed the second Wright brothers flight in person and watched the first man to walk on the moon on TV.

I love the back story of the Wright Flyer replica that is in the museum at Kitty Hawk. It was built in the workshop at the Smithsonian Institute. If I remember correctly the replica cost a million dollars and took a team of workers a year to build. The Wright Brothers built the original in a few weeks with a few dollars.

[Jim Koepke]

I love the back story of the Wright Flyer replica that is in the museum at Kitty Hawk. It was built in the workshop at the Smithsonian Institute. If I remember correctly the replica cost a million dollars and took a team of workers a year to build. The Wright Brothers built the original in a few weeks with a few dollars.

The Wright brothers were not getting paid for their work. They likely didn't have a team of engineers and designers creating a file of drawings and documentation of every nut, bolt and washer.

Also, when people are paid by the hour, they don't tend to work as enthusiastically as someone who is thinking about how they are going to pay for their next meal.

jtk

[Bill Dufour]

KCBS radio is still going strong since 1909. They were the first commercial radio station in the world.
Bill D

[Kent A Bathurst]

Don't think the Toyota solid state battery will reduce demand for lithium, they still use lithium, the difference is they don't use a liquid electrolyte. "Long seen as a potential game-changer for BEVs, Toyota has made a technological breakthrough in its quest to improve the durability of Li-Ion solid-state batteries."
https://newsroom.toyota.eu/toyotas-a...e%20batteries.

Oh. Well. There are clearly smarter people than I on this topic. Thanks

[Doug Garson]

Oh. Well. There are clearly smarter people than I on this topic. Thanks

And his name is "hey Google"

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

I was trying to remember how to use a slide rule a few weeks ago when I bought one at a flea market. I remember an acquaintance,, engineering student at Bucknell about 1971, worked an entire summer to buy a scientific calculator that can now be purchased for around $10. and probably for which there is a free app for cell phones.

Discoveries and inventions are not always true discoveries or inventions at a lot, but of times, more of somebody applled the idea to a new set of circumstances. There were revolving firearms in central Europe in the late 1500's. But metallurgy and industrial precision had advanced sufficiently by the 1830's to make Samuel Colts application of the idea a huge deal. Ben Franklin developed an electric motor in the 1700's, nut thought it was just a curiousity. He did use it to turn a turkey on a spit in the kitchen, but the wide applications were not realized until Tesla invented a more practical improvement. In this day and age, we know where vast resources are, it just takes industry's evolution to make such resources worth using.