We're running low on lithium? Rumors!

We 've been complaining about battery technology or lithium batteries, but have you considered how lithium feels?

Of course, it's a little joke, so here's the lithium stuff.

Recently, Tesla launched Power Wall's home battery system and commercial battery system Powerpack, which is known as "Super Recharge". Among them, Power Wall's high-grade version ($3,500) can store 10 degrees of electricity. Taiwan media said that the total number of orders has reached 800 million U.S. dollars. The "red-eyed" Mercedes (Chrysler) also announced that it will compete with products that store 20 degrees of energy.

In addition, Nevada is also building Gigafactory, the world's largest Super battery factory, which mainly produces lithium power. Matsushita has already confirmed that it will invest in people.

As a result, the industry began to worry that the Gigafactory production capacity is open, plus other manufacturers are working hard, lithium raw materials enough?

Let's make a prediction from the data. The United States gave geographical survey data earlier this year. It is estimated that the global lithium resources are about 39.5 million tons, but only 13.59 million tons have commercial mining value. With current demand, 300 years is not a problem, but analysts expect that with the rapid development of the electric vehicle(new energy vehicle) market, it will need to reach 800,000 tons annually by 2040, which is really "stretched."

Back at Tesla's super plant, where it is expected to consume 8000 tons of lithium a year at its peak in five years, it is also a big appetite.

Therefore, in the absence of a breakthrough in battery technology, how to improve lithium ore refining technology is also an urgent issue. At present, Australian mining company Cobre Montana has proposed the idea of using wet metallurgy as an alternative to high-temperature leaching, which not only saves costs but also extracts ore with a lithium oxide content of less than 5 %.

It is worth mentioning that the amount of lithium in seawater is also as high as 230 billion tons, but the high content of high-quality ore is quite rare.

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