The Problem: Shortages of fresh water and lithium.
The Solution: Use desalination to produce fresh water and lithium from solar and sea.
I was talking about the expense of desalination recently and saying that if money could be made from the waste product (brine), the economics of desalination could become workable at scale.
A week later in the Economist, an article appeared discussing a new way to produce lithium from brine in concentrated tanks as opposed to the massive lakes used currently.
Naturally, the two ideas merged together.
As fresh water (i.e. not salt water) becomes increasingly scarce in many parts of the world, desalinating seawater seems the sensible option; there is unlikely ever to be a shortage of seawater.
However, desalination at the moment remains expensive and often uses a lot of fossil fuel power.
I therefore propose a new methodology, using solar electricity generated from solar power (either photovoltaics or concentrated solar, but I prefer the latter) to power the desalination of water and to then power a concentrated industrial process of lithium extraction from the leftover brine.
Lithium is a key component in batteries, and in short supply; a company is looking to setup a mine in Cornwall, in the UK, for example, to exploit the resource there. For the world to build all the electric vehicles and other battery-powered items it wants and needs, more Lithium is required.
At the same time, fresh water is in short supply in many parts of the world. Water tables have been depleted, lakes are drying up, and river flows have diminished.
My proposal seeks to massively scale up desalination and lithium production, to produce vast quantities of fresh water, which can then be treated (the treatment is to ensure it has the correct mineral content for the location it is spread into) and pumped into natural ecosystems to restore freshwater sources and water tables.
At the same time, it would create vast quantities of Lithium, which would be used to scale up battery production and provide a key source of revenue to make the whole process economically viable.
As this project would be delivered at scale in hot areas where solar is viable and also where fresh water is needed, there is an opportunity to create a vast solar array which would not only power the water desalination and lithium production, but also provide surplus electricity to sell onto local national grids, or to use to create green hydrogen.
The key with this project is to have multiple outputs to generate revenue; water never commands a sufficiently high price tag by itself, but combined with lithium and hydrogen, or similar outputs, could make the whole project succeed.
A useful two-in-one solution to create two products that are vital to 21st century living and efforts to avert the worst consequences of climate change.
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