To take an obscure but increasingly important example, I once visited the Phillips 66 Humber Refinery in the English county of Lincolnshire, where they turn the tarry stuff left at the bottom of the barrel into something called “needle coke.” That needle coke—a hard, black, stony substance, which looks a lot like coal—is the main feedstock for the production of synthetic graphite, the chief ingredient in the anodes in lithium-ion batteries. Most of us now realise that the batteries inside our smartphones and electric cars are made of many obscure ingredients we dig out of the ground—more on
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