Mining water for lithium?

The last Saturday in August in Michigan is the Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise and I have been there twice. It's the biggest single day event in Michigan every year and there are 40,000 cars on Woodward Avenue and over 1.5 million spectators. All those old cars are on the street in what becomes a stop and go parking lot with eight lanes of traffic, four lanes each way through small towns. You can't hardly breath because those old cars are there with their engines bellowing out mostly pre-catalytic converter pollution into the air. It makes you realize how far we have actually come. No guilt here.

 

The mineral needed for batteries with more issues at the moment is cobalt. Are they also targeting it?

@tochatihu had a thread a while back on the valuable stuff a desalination plant might also take a shot at gathering while making drinking water.

 

I think lithium is already extracted from brine water.

And yes if ocean water is desalinated on very large scale, the byproduct is buckets of brine. Getting value out of that would improve business model.

 

Lithium isn't exactly a rare element on Earth, and other minerals might become the limiting factor on battery product. Cobalt is rarer, and major sources have political and social issues surrounding them. Unfortunately, getting it from seawater likely may only happen when getting the gold becomes worthwhile. There appears to be more mercury in the ocean.
MINERAL MAKEUP OF SEAWATER
https://www.whoi.edu/cms/files/msaito/2005/3/SaitoMoffett_GCA_Co_2002_1804.pdf

 

My impression was that, while the element itself is not scarce, deposits concentrated to economically extractable levels are infrequent.

 

Four lanes of traffic through small towns!
There's not enough room for more than two lens in most of our cramped cities in UK. Remember, our whole landmass area could be fitted into certain US states.

From the latest doom reports, it may seem be possible to economically harvest plastic from Earth's oceans before very long. Only problem now is finding a useful purpose for the crop.

 

We can convert that plastic, or any organic material, back into a petroleum through thermal depolymerization.

 

That's four lanes each way, total eight lanes.

Woodward Avenue runs from Detroit to Pontiac Michigan and has a historical significance of being the first paved road in the US
Back in the day the big three ran their new cars up and down it for testing.

Enjoy!

 

That's wider than some of our streets are long!!!

 

This 828 km Canadian road has a 300 meter right-of-way to expand!
My first Toyota (1969 Corolla) died on that road.

Ontario Highway 401 - Wikipedia