The Secret, Magical Life Of Lithium
November 16, 2024 10:08 PM Subscribe
Spodumene? [LiAlSi2O6]: there's a reef of that lithium-rich white rock exposed on the West face of the hills behind our house. Sufficient to attract €2milion of Chinese venture capital to fund drilling some test cores 10-12 years ago. Driving to work at The Institute at about that time, I wondered about the level of lithium in the ground water and also whether different species of tree would/could preferentially concentrate Li Na and K. I was, ludicrously, teaching water chemistry at the time and devised a lab practical testing the tree filter hypothesis.
One the students in that class insisted that I was going to supervise his final year research project the next academic year; and that became a PhD project. Although it was initially refused external funding because ". . . the supervisor lacks any track-record or credibility in the field of water chemistry . . .". True dat! But the following year, The Institute had hired a real water chemist who took over the teaching and the graduate student and secured funding.
We/ they sampled water [out of domestic boreholes connected to kitchen faucets - which meant we didn't need Chinese VC! ] from transects across the county.
Q. and the answer???
A. data is really noisy.
One of the side-bars to the adventure was testing all the holy wells in the region . . . to find that their lithium titre was not significantly elevated.
Lawrence Wright’s 2010 New Yorker article “Lithium Dreams” is on message but has some push-back
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:16 AM on November 17 [2 favorites]
One the students in that class insisted that I was going to supervise his final year research project the next academic year; and that became a PhD project. Although it was initially refused external funding because ". . . the supervisor lacks any track-record or credibility in the field of water chemistry . . .". True dat! But the following year, The Institute had hired a real water chemist who took over the teaching and the graduate student and secured funding.
We/ they sampled water [out of domestic boreholes connected to kitchen faucets - which meant we didn't need Chinese VC! ] from transects across the county.
Q. and the answer???
A. data is really noisy.
One of the side-bars to the adventure was testing all the holy wells in the region . . . to find that their lithium titre was not significantly elevated.
Lawrence Wright’s 2010 New Yorker article “Lithium Dreams” is on message but has some push-back
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:16 AM on November 17 [2 favorites]
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posted by unearthed at 12:03 AM on November 17