Comment by happosai
2 days ago
Sulfur in mining tailings is huge problem ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_mine_drainage ). This one reason there is so much research in Li-S batteries. Plenty of material innovations have come from people looking at mine tailings and wondering if something useful could me made of it.
For 22 years I designed the electronics controls that ran Longwall Coal Mining Machines. I've been in many mines.
The problem with extracting things from tailings is that they are often contaminated with low levels of Thorium. Extracting the other things like Lithium, Sulfur etc, starts to build up the quantity of Thorium. Which sounds good if you want to build a molten salt Thorium reactor; I understand that China and India have prototype to come on line around 2027. Based on designs and experimental units that the US did in the ~1950s.
The tailing problem is that the company is how handling Nuclear Grade Material which causes the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to show up at the mine site. No mine wants to deal with this paper work, and health ramifications, headache so the tailings are not used.
If the profit ratio to headaches would improve things might change.
This seems backwards.
The tailings do not become nuclear waste when we decide to use them for something.
Perhaps the problem is that you are either refining away the thorium, or refining away as much non-thorium as you can. Either way you end up with mostly-thorium, and we know that radioactive stuff gets angry in large groups.
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Everythings ass backwards when bureaucrats or the military get involved.
It's not sulfur so much as sulfate.
It doesn't always come from mining. A huge problem with acid rock drainage (ARD) showed up when they built a freeway in Pennsylvania by merely exposing the rock.
The concept of making batteries out of drainage because both contain sulfur is like making socks out of cow manure because both contain carbon. There's so much of the latter that you could never use it all, but also the ingredient is dirt cheap in pure form.
I have a side project that could convert ARD into industrial strength sulfuric acid, which is unbelievably difficult to buy and transport, despite it being the most common industrial chemical in the world after water.
Acid rock drainage is currently devastating Arctic streams with the melting of pockets of permafrost, which are in effect strip mines.
https://youtu.be/Lxfpgqn6NOo?feature=shared
One of the larger sinks for waste sulfur might be stratospheric injection for geoengineering, which is looking increasingly likely.
It's sulfides like pyrite that, when exposed to air, are oxidized by bacteria to sulfate.
There's an enormous belt of pyrite in Spain that has caused a river, the Rio Tinto, to be one of the most acid rivers on the planet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Tinto_(river)
I'm not sure the belt of pyrite is best labelled as the cause here.
It might have something to do with the inferred activities of Rio Tinto, a transnational corporation that is one of the largest mining firms in the world.
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Yes, and it's not just "random" sulfur, it's integral to the geologic complexes that miners look for to get the minerals they want.
Think of it like the husk of a corn cob, or the cob of your corn. It's a byproduct of the very things we're looking for in mining.
The only other activity that could get hose minerals is indistinguishable from magic.
the largest pyramid on the planet.
https://www.southernfriedscience.com/alberta-canada-is-the-p...
Once we stop using fossil fuels, maybe sulfur in mine tailings will become a valuable resource. Today, sulfur comes from desulfurization of fossil fuels.
so long living batteries are a _good thing_.
Almost everything humans do requires an extensive life cycle analysis.
but you know, lets just cut everything and pretend that'll improve our assessments of reality.