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The Salton Sea would produce the world's Greenest Lithium let the latest extraction technologies work!
from SMR June 2022
THE LEAD
THE SALTON SEA IS A DIMINISHING LANDLOCKED LAKE ABOUT 40 MILES NORTH OF THE CALIFORNIA-MEXICO BORDER. THOUGH THE LAKE WAS ONCE THE HEART OF A THRIVING VACATION CITY, WATER CONTAMINATION AND DECADES OF DROUGHT HAVE RESULTED IN THE ECOSYSTEM'S COLLAPSE AND THE EMERGENCE OF GHOST TOWNS.
Despite the environmental calamity, the California Energy Commission estimates that there is enough lithium in the state to supply all of the United States' predicted future demand and 40% of global need. Lithium is the common denominator in all sorts of EV batteries, so this is major news for the expanding electric-vehicle industry.
THE LEAD
MARIA NAVA-FROELICH
The Mayor of Calipatria, California
ALICIA KNAPP
President, and CEO of BHE Renewables
Open-pit mining or evaporation ponds, which work by pumping lithium-containing brine to the surface and waiting for the water to dry out, have traditionally been used to recover lithium. Both of these systems have large land footprints, use a lot of water, and produce a lot of contaminants and trash.
However, three businesses in the Salton Sea are developing chemical procedures to extract lithium in a far cleaner manner, utilizing the Salton Sea's abundant geothermal resources. There are now 11 geothermal power facilities running around the lake, 10 of which are owned by Berkshire Hathaway's renewable energy company, BHE Renewables. "Across all of our 10 geothermal sites, we're already pumping 50,000 gallons of brine per minute to the surface, and we're using the steam from that brine to generate sustainable energy," said Alicia Knapp, president, and CEO of BHE Renewables. So, we're already halfway there since we have the lithium in our hands."
EnergySource and Controlled Thermal Resources, or CTR, are two additional companies working on joint geothermal-lithium facilities near the Salton Sea, and GM has already committed to sourcing lithium from CTR.
This new sector might be a big economic windfall to the region, where the predominantly Mexican-American community faces high unemployment and poverty rates, as well as health effects from poisonous dust that blows off the Salton Sea's evaporating lake bottom.
"In terms of the Lithium Valley, we're cautiously excited," Maria Nava-Froelich, the mayor of Calipatria, California, where the geothermal power plants are located, remarked. "For Imperial County, we see it as a game changer."
Nava-Froelich expects that the business would bring much-needed jobs and development to the region, assisting in revitalizing communities that have experienced a large outflow of young people seeking better chances abroad. Environmentalists hope that the increased attention and funding would speed up California's attempts to rehabilitate the ecology around the Salton Sea.
If there was ever a time to invest in domestic mineral projects, it's now. President Joe Biden used the Defense Production Act to enhance EV battery materials like lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and manganese at the end of March.
However, because extracting lithium from geothermal brines has never been done at a scale previously, it is unclear if the electric vehicle industry, the local people, or the environment would benefit.
Valley of Lithium
This isn't the first time the Salton Sea has sparked interest in lithium recovery. Simbol Materials, a hyped start-up, built a demonstration plant but shut down in 2015 after a failed takeover effort by Tesla and never built a commercial-scale facility.
Since then, demand for lithium has increased dramatically, and prices have risen considerably after falling sharply in
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Controlled Thermal Resources is building a combined geothermal power plant and lithium extraction facility, which will provide 20,000 tons of lithium to GM. Andrew Evers (CNBC).
Geothermal power station, south of the Salton Sea, in Imperial Valley California, October 27, 2021. In the background, the agricultural crops that feed part of America. olivier touron divergence for the world.
2018, motivating projects that previously would not have been viable. The current trio of companies stands to profit handsomely from the hundreds of thousands of tons of lithium in the area if they can prove their technology works.
"When completely developed, the Salton Sea field could easily service over 600,000 tons a year, when global production is now less than 400 [thousand]," stated Rod Colwell, CEO of CTR.
CTR, unlike Berkshire Hathaway and EnergySource, does not have any geothermal power plants in the area, so it is simultaneously establishing a geothermal and lithium recovery facility.
The company is now building a demonstration plant and hopes to establish its first full-scale operation by 2024, supplying GM with 20,000 tons of lithium. CTR's first facility, according to Colwell, will cost slightly under $1 billion, which is a higher price per ton of lithium than many typical lithium recovery operations. However, all three firms see that price dropping as technology advances. To recover lithium, CTR is employing ion-exchange technology developed in collaboration with Bay Area-based Lilac Solutions. Geothermal brine is pumped through tanks containing ceramic beads, which absorb lithium from the brine.
The lithium is washed out with hydrochloric acid when the beads are saturated, leaving only lithium chloride. CTR proposes to refine this intermediate product on-site, yielding lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide, a powder ready to be processed and turned into precursor chemicals, and then made into battery cells.
Berkshire Hathaway is also adopting ion-exchange technology, though it hasn't provided as much information about how it will operate as CTR has. EnergySource has created a technology called Integrated Lithium Adsorption Desorption, or ILiAD, and is now working on a full-scale facility operational by 2024.
According to Derek Benson, CEO of EnergySource, "What we see in terms of production costs is that geothermal brine should be around the first quartile in terms of market competitiveness."
Notably, all three businesses want to purify the lithium on-site rather than outsourcing the process. However, the
companies are ill-equipped to handle other procedures such as chemical processing and battery cell production, which are still predominantly done in Asia.
"Hopefully in the next years, the remainder of the supply chain will be created in the United States as well," Knapp said, "so that we can go straight from lithium and other minerals in the ground to batteries that we're utilizing to drive our infrastructure."
Italvolt, an EV battery manufacturer, recently announced intentions to form Statevolt with the goal of building a $4 billion gigafactory in Imperial Valley to create enough lithium-ion batteries for 650,000 electric vehicles per year. Statevolt signed a letter of intent with CTR to buy lithium and geothermal energy but did not respond to a question from CNBC about whether it will undertake chemical processing on-site.
Community participation
The new business can have a significant influence on the Imperial Valley neighborhood, where many low-income individuals work in agriculture, and the unemployment rate is over three times the national average. The Lithium Valley Commission was established in California to bring together government, industry, and community partners to examine the potential benefits of lithium recovery.
"It's going to be critical that the community be involved and engaged," said Luis Olmedo, a member of the commission who represents disadvantaged and low-income communities in the Salton Sea geothermal resource area.
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lithium extraction salton sea drone
Hudson Ranch I geothermal power plant, March 2012, Salton Sea, California USsource EnergySource. "We are well aware that these are high target regions where communities will be exploited. "We understand."
The Lithium Valley Commission also has representatives from Berkshire Hathaway and CTR. The corporations emphasize the positive effects of the booming industry, such as job creation and increased property tax income that will support local schools and fund further government services.
Knapp stated, "This neighborhood needs us." "And this is a fantastic place for us to invest and benefit not just ourselves as a company, but all of us, because lithium is so important, and [benefit] these people right here in this community by providing jobs, education, opportunities, and all the economic development that comes with such a large investment," says the company.
According to Knapp, they're collaborating with a number of local educational institutions, ranging from high schools to community colleges to four-year universities, to ensure that students interested in working in the geothermal and lithium industries are appropriately taught.
"You realize we're probably 90% trades, right?" So we're not searching for a bunch of Ph.D.s," Colwell explained.
Olmedo and Nava-Froelich believe the current dialogues are encouraging, but they've been disillusioned in the past by grandiose rhetoric.
"We're being careful because we don't want to get our hopes up too high," said Nava-Froelich. "Is all of this stuff true, or are they merely talking about it and planning to withdraw out and go somewhere else?" It nearly appears to be too good to be true."
Environmentalists see this as an opportunity to accelerate habitat restoration efforts at the Salton Sea.
While California has been attempting to solve the problem for years, environmentalists are urging the state to speed up initiatives that entail establishing lower-salinity ponds on the dry lake bed where fish and birds may thrive. Things are finally moving, thanks to the state's fiscal surplus.
"They require a longer-term strategy as well as a pipeline for future projects." So there's a lot more work to be done, but we're seeing some progress," said Michael Cohen, a senior research associate at the Pacific Center, a water conservation research institute. "In fact, we're seeing more development than we've ever seen." As mining projects in other parts of the country face community opposition, it appears that lithium recovery at the Salton Sea could be the rare-minerals project that brings everyone together. If it works, that is.
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