I walk dogs with a neighbor who for 20 years was a lithium buyer for a large American company. He roamed from Siberia to Atacama buying lithium from individuals, small mines, large mines, and even countries. Now that I have flashlights and lithium batteries, it was a thousand questions. He finally got tired of talking about it and gave me this book as a hint to stop bugging him about lithium. It was originally written by a large German company and translated into different languages. This one is in English. It isn’t a book really, more of a primer. It’s a very interesting read and a good reference. Happy to have it. I have no idea if this could be found in a library. Anyway, I stopped with the questions, well, not entirely. It was a fascinating job, and he could write quite a tale about those years, negotiating with warring parties, trying to stay neutral and getting out with some lithium……. He carried gold, sweated bullets, and occasionally outfoxed the Chinese for this increasingly rare metal. Now retired, my friend has serious heart problems and I worry about him. I’ll never look at those 18650’s the same again.
As yet I haven’t had good luck posting pictures…. If these don’t work here’s the reference:
“LITHIUM”. ISBN-10: 3-937889-36-1. Printed in Germany 889036
Chemetall GmbH Lithium Division
If this book has already been mentioned, my apologies for double posting.
Apparently pure lithium doesn’t appear in nature, rather in matrices with other elements and must be processed to extract and isolate it. Different isolates are used for different things; glass, pharmaceuticals, rechargeable batteries, non-rechargeable batteries, cement, optical coatings, bearing grease, fuel cells, and such. It’s a pretty versatile substance. Gleaned from the book, lithium-cobalt it the primary molecule in lithium-ion re-chargeable batteries. Interesting stuff. Been reading a lot lately……
Reddit r/batteries frequent contributor “1Davide” (Davide Andrea), who is an electrical engineer, is publishing a book about Li-ion batteries: Li-ion Batteries and Applications. I’m not a expert but he seems to know what he is taking about.
Edit: the website is outdated and the book is actually already published, the updated title is Lithium-Ion Batteries and Applications . It comes in 2 volumes. The book is rather new so it’s expensive.
Intercalated?? Is that what happens when two praying mantisis get tangled up? Interesting word. I’ll look it up. I remember dropping a blob of lithium metal into water once. Holy smokes, what a dance.
Wait, I’m wrong again. It was sodium that got violent in water. I’m not sure what lithium does. The lab used to store it in kerosine, along with lithium-aluminum-hydride, but not in the same container (smile). I remember a goof in the college dorm who flushed a chunk of sodium. About a minute later water exploded from all the toilets on the wing, and some plumbing got wrecked. They kicked his butt out.
Lightbringer - Thanks for a link to the book. I got one to give away. I wouldn’t have thought amazon would have something so esoteric.
Metallic Li should act about the same way as Na. It breaks the water apart to form LiOH and hydrogen. The hydrogen eventually blows up, hence the fireworks.
One thing that always bugged me about nucleosynthesis theory, was “where is all the lithium”? Hydrogen fusion creates Helium, which fuses to form Lithium, etc on up the element chart. But then it skips over to Carbon, what about all the intermediates Li, Be, B?