-Is it feasible to extract the raw materials required for lithium batteries from the deep seabed?

Is it feasible to extract the raw materials required for lithium batteries from the deep seabed?
author:enerbyte source:本站 click491 Release date: 2023-04-11 11:37:12
abstract:
With the promotion of the vision of sustainable development, clean and renewable energy is constantly replacing fossil fuels to supply energy for vehicles, but this energy storage has a great demand for mineral and metal resources. The lithium batteries used in electric vehi...

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With the promotion of the vision of sustainable development, clean and renewable energy is constantly replacing fossil fuels to supply energy for vehicles, but this energy storage has a great demand for mineral and metal resources.

The lithium batteries used in electric vehicles contain various metals, almost all of which are extracted from underground mining minerals, including nickel, manganese, and cobalt. From an environmental and economic perspective, the cost of recycling and refining these metals is enormous, and as the demand for battery raw materials increases, the cost may gradually increase.

However, a Canadian startup called The Metals Company has proposed a novel idea of extracting the raw materials required for lithium batteries from the deep seabed. It is said that in a thin layer of sediment on the seafloor, there are a large number of "polymetallic nodules" deposits, including all ores such as nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese. These ores have long been known and were first analyzed around 1970, but further research is scarce.

The Metals Company has obtained exploration rights for a 150000 square kilometer area within a large Pacific deposit approximately 500 miles south of Hawaii. It is estimated that there is enough ore in this region alone to supply battery raw materials for 280 million electric vehicles (about a quarter of all passenger cars currently in use). Assuming the average power of each power lithium battery pack is 50kWh, this means that the raw materials extracted by the metal company can be used to manufacture 14000GWh of batteries.

The metal company plans to build a deep-sea mining platform equipped with a collector running along the seabed to collect polymetallic nodules and send them to the surface through a riser system. The riser is connected to a container floating on the sea surface, which separates the nodules from the water and sediment before sending them back to the seabed. The collected nodules are brought back to land and processed into metals. The metal company stated that nodules are mainly composed of useful metals, resulting in 99% less solid waste than land mining.

This method also has other benefits. The metal company claims that the carbon dioxide emissions generated by its method are only 10% of traditional mining, with a water consumption of 11%, and a relative toxicity of only 1%. In addition, as the ore deposits on or near the surface, the company does not use any blasting or drilling methods to extract the ore, thereby reducing the damage to the environment.

Although metal companies' processes have many benefits, they may still have impacts on the ecosystem. Human understanding of deep-sea ecosystems is still limited, and damage to the environment may harm animals and plants.

There are supporters and opponents of deep-sea mining, but both sides lack truly convincing exploration data. At least prioritizing the work of environmental impact assessment, it is appropriate to have a comprehensive understanding of environmental risks before mining.

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