Originally Posted by zze86

I doubt that it is the lithium doing anything. It is most likely the soap in the grease. Soap is made with lye and can eat away at Aluminum.

Just a wild guess here since I have no idea what they did but I'm guessing they let the water/grease mixture sit long enough for the grease constituents to separate. The soap dissolves in the water but the oils float. The dissolving soap releases the lye to the relatively low volume water, creating an alkaline solution which then eats away at the Al.

The question then is, is this something to worry about? Will your bike sit in water for months at a time with enough grease to turn ALL the water alkaline?

Not really anything to worry about IMO. I guess they showed it can happen in theory but wouldn't worry too much about it in real life.