How The Troubled Salton Sea Could Become The World’s Largest Lithium Supplier

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I really hope they use some of the money to improve the area. The Salton Sea is going to start to disappear if nothing is done to refill it since the Colorado River, whose floods would refill the lake in the past, has been redirected.

Luckily there are technologies that would allow a portion of the geothermal brine to be partially desalinated and used to refill the Salton Sea in an environmentally friendly way. I'm just not sure the developers know about them.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/FrancesABadger 📅︎︎ May 13 2022 🗫︎ replies
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Lithium is powering the electric vehicle revolution. It's the common denominator across all types of EV batteries, and we desperately need more of it, especially domestically. Enter the Salton Sea: A toxic, shrinking lake that's one of the country's biggest environmental disasters due to a variety of circumstances, from water contamination to a decades long drought. It also happens to be extremely rich in both geothermal activity and minerals. About 40 miles north of the California-Mexico border, the Salton Sea is estimated to contain enough lithium to meet all of the United States' projected future demand and 40% of the entire world's demand. The area has been dubbed Lithium Valley. Here at the Salton Sea, it's a phenomenal geothermal resource, but it's a little bit different in the sense that is a large hydrothermal resource. So what that means is the geothermal fluid comes out actually as a hot brine, not a clean steam. That brine is used to produce clean energy at the 11 geothermal power plants in the area. And it also contains lots of lithium, which could be recovered without the need for open pit mining or evaporation ponds, just the addition of extensions to the existing power plants. It will be much, much smaller and less impactful than any of the current ways of producing lithium. Three companies, Berkshire Hathaway Renewables, EnergySource and Controlled Thermal Resources are all developing joint geothermal power and lithium recovery facilities that, if all goes according to plan, will provide clean power to the grid and produce battery grade lithium. GM is already onboard, as it's committed to source lithium from Controlled Thermal Resources. This new industry could be a big boon to the region, where the majority Mexican American community faces high rates of unemployment and poverty and suffers health impacts from the toxic dust that blows off the Salton Sea's drying lakebed. We're cautiously excited in regards to the Lithium Valley. We see it as a game-changer here for the Imperial County. Lithium recovery could provide much needed jobs and the increased attention and money flowing into the region could hasten efforts to reduce the dust and clean up the sea. If they're going to work there and they've invested billions of dollars in extraction facilities that are right next to the Salton Sea, they're going to want to see something that's positive for the region. Nobody wants to work next to an eyesore. Extracting lithium from geothermal brines has never been done at scale. But if it works, the Salton Sea could become an epicenter of lithium production, helping automakers meet their ambitious electric vehicle production targets. All the big autos now are looking for sustainable minerals. And this is the cleanest, greenest lithium on the planet. To understand how all this lithium got here, it's important to grasp the Salton Sea's history. For millennia, as the Colorado River changed course or flooded, it would fill the low-lying area called the Salton Sink with water and rich sedimentary deposits. And so you have a very porous sandstone that's been filled with seawater and Colorado River mineral deposits over the years. While the water eventually evaporated, the minerals like lithium stayed. And in 1905, floodwaters from the Colorado River breached a canal, causing water to pour into the Salton Sink unabated for 18 months, creating California's largest lake. Since then, drainage from nearby farms in the Imperial and Coachella Valleys have fed the lake with water containing pesticides and fertilizers. But what was once a thriving resort community in the fifties and sixties has given way to ghost towns, and a surprisingly vibrant arts community. But surrounded by desert, the Salton Sea has been slowly evaporating for decades and the shrinking has hastened in recent years. Contamination from agricultural runoff and rising salinity levels have caused a collapse of the lake's once vibrant ecosystem. The dry lakebed contains toxins like arsenic and selenium, and when the dust kicks up, the surrounding population is exposed. We know what the hospitals are seeing, what the clinics are seeing in acute respiratory. Niland and the one side, Salton City on the other side. And and basically they've turned into ghost towns. Yet amidst this environmental disaster, the unique geology of the region has created a geothermal resource area that covers more than 10,000 acres. There are 11 operating power plants at the Salton Sea, ten owned by Berkshire Hathaway and one by EnergySource. Together, they have the capacity to produce around 400 megawatts of clean geothermal energy, enough to power about 350,000 homes, over seven times the number of houses in Imperial County where the plants are located. We are standing arguably in between the North American and the Pacific plates. So as the continents pull apart, the crust is thin. And so you have these hot magmatic bodies that come close to the surface. Magma heats the surrounding rocks and salty water called brine circulates among them. Minerals like lithium dissolve into the brine, which is used to produce geothermal energy when it's pumped to the surface and converted into a gas that turns an electricity generating turbine. Geothermal power plants have operated at the Salton Sea for 40 years and traditionally, the leftover brine is just re-injected back into the earth. But as the electric vehicle market heats up, technology that can recover lithium from these brines is receiving increased attention and investment. But this isn't the first time that there's been interest in lithium recovery at the Salton Sea. Hyped start-up Simbol Materials previously developed a demonstration plant, but the company ceased operations in 2015 after a failed acquisition attempt by Tesla, and never developed a commercial-scale facility. But since then, demand for lithium has shot up, and after falling sharply in 2018, prices are surging once again, incentivizing projects that might not have been economical before. If the current trio of companies can prove their tech works, they stand to make a lot of money from the hundreds of thousands of tons of lithium in the area. The Salton Sea field, fully developed, could well serve 600,000 tons a year. I mean the world production is less than 400 now. We could satisfy collectively the U.S. needs alone, plus maybe some export depending on how quick the U.S. ramps up. Right now though, the upfront cost of extracting lithium from geothermal brine is steep. Colwell estimates his company's first plant will cost just shy of $1 billion to build and will produce 20,000 tonnes of lithium per year. Compare that to Lithium. America's proposed open pit mine in Nevada, which is estimated to cost just over $1 billion but produce 60,000 tonnes of lithium per year, or their proposed evaporation pond in Argentina, which is estimated to cost about $740 million and produce 40,000 tonnes of lithium per year. Evaporation ponds work by pumping lithium containing brine to the surface and waiting for the water to dry up, leaving lithium behind. But these new companies expect that low operating costs will help to balance out the high upfront cost of their joint geothermal-lithium plants. Plus, all three companies will receive additional revenue from the geothermal energy that they produce. What we see is that geothermal brine should be around the first quartile in terms of market competitiveness. Of course, this remains to be seen. And the economics remain the biggest unknown in this whole endeavor. But if the full-scale plants do work as intended, it's likely that they'll be much more eco-friendly than mining or evaporation ponds, which have huge land footprints, are often quite water intensive and can create lots of contamination and waste. Both of those are more impactful to the environment than what we'll be doing. So right now we are already pumping 50,000 gallons of brine per minute across all of our ten geothermal facilities, and we're using the steam from that brine to generate clean energy. And so we're really halfway there in that we've got the lithium right here. Knapp's team is finishing up construction of its lithium recovery demonstration plant and plans for its first commercial facility to be up and running in 2026. The hope, Knapp says, is that Berkshire Hathaway will eventually add lithium recovery extensions to all of its geothermal plants in the area. EnergySource is jumping straight into building a commercial-scale lithium recovery facility. The company expects to start construction this summer and for the plant to be operational by 2024. And Controlled Thermal Resources is building its pilot plant, starting construction on a full-scale facility in October and planning to open its first combined geothermal and lithium plant by the beginning of 2024, providing lithium to GM. This is an extension of an existing industry. It's a closed loop. There's no reagents, there's no chemicals, there's no waste products, nothing. And with all the plants are here, it's a small extension. If you drove past one, you probably wouldn't know the difference if that had a lithium plant on it or not. Controlled Thermal Resources has developed its lithium recovery tech in partnership with Lilac Solutions, using ion-exchange technology. In this case, here's what that looks like. At the recovery facility, geothermal brine flows through tanks filled with ceramic beads, which absorb lithium from the brine. When the beads are saturated, the lithium is flushed out with hydrochloric acid and lithium chloride remains. This is an intermediary product that Controlled Thermal Resources plants to refine onsite, yielding lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide, a powder that's ready to be processed and transformed into precursor chemicals and then manufactured into battery cells. Berkshire Hathaway is also using ion-exchange technology for lithium recovery. And EnergySource has developed its own proprietary platform called Integrated Lithium Absorption Desorption Technology or ILiAD. All three companies plan to refine lithium onsite, which will help to secure a domestic battery supply chain. But the companies aren't equipped to handle additional steps, such as chemical processing and battery cell manufacturing, which still primarily take place in Asia. Then the rest of the supply chain, hopefully in the coming years, will also be developed in the U.S., so that we're able to go straight from lithium and other minerals in the ground to batteries that we're using to run our infrastructure. That could happen sooner rather than later. EV battery maker Italvolt recently announced plans to launch a new company with the purpose of building a $4 billion Gigafactory in Imperial Valley that would produce enough lithium-ion batteries for 650,000 electric vehicles per year. The new company, Statevolt, has signed a letter of intent to source lithium and geothermal power from Controlled Thermal Resources. Another open question is how this new industry will impact the Imperial Valley community, where many low-income residents work in agriculture and the unemployment rate is 14%, over three times the national average. California formed the Lithium Valley Commission so that government, industry and community stakeholders could come together and analyze the potential opportunities that lithium recovery could bring. Luis Olmedo is a member of the commission, representing disadvantaged and low-income communities in the Salton Sea Geothermal Resource Area. He also runs a local nonprofit devoted to environmental justice and health. It's going to be really important that the community is involved and engaged because if the community isn't there, the vision is going to be drawn out for them. Olmedo stresses that if government or industry is going to bring in scientists and economists to analyze the impacts of lithium recovery, then the community deserves the same. We've got to balance the table, and we need to be able to have access to the same expertise, to bring in the community perspective, the environmental justice perspective and the equity perspective. Both Berkshire Hathaway and Controlled Thermal Resources also have representatives on the Lithium Valley Commission and stressed the positive impacts that they believe the burgeoning industry will bring, from property tax revenue that could benefit local schools and fund additional government services to job creation. This community needs us. And this is a fantastic place for us to invest and benefit not just ourselves as a company, but all of us, as lithium is so essential, and these people right here in this community, by providing jobs, education, opportunities, all the economic development that comes with that big of an investment. Knapp says that they're working with a number of educational institutions in the area, from high schools to community colleges to four year institutions to make sure that students interested in getting a job in the geothermal and lithium industries are properly trained. Colwell, who serves on the Lithium Valley Commission himself, says that CTR's first combined geothermal and lithium plant will employ 220 people and that if the company succeeds in its goal of building out eight total plants, it will employ 1,400 people. In an open letter to the Imperial County and Salton Sea communities, Colwell says that 95% of these jobs will be sourced locally and that the average salary will be almost twice the current average in the region. If you're working as a farm worker, for example, you can go into a part-time course and move into a nice career operating job. We're about 90% trades, you know, we're not looking for a bunch of PhDs here. Olmedo feels encouraged by the conversations that are happening, but he wants to ensure that there's binding commitments when it comes to issues like job creation, training and other community benefits. They need to make sure that as they put on the table, resources, tax incentives, policies, it has to be written. Handshake deals aren't enough anymore. While gestures like the open letter from Colwell are a good first step. they're far from a promise. And since these companies are yet to prove that their tech actually works at scale, it's impossible to know yet what benefits the community will actually see. We don't want to get our hopes up high because we're thinking all this talk, is it really happening? Or they may pull out and go somewhere else? It's almost too good to be true. But if there was ever a time to bet on domestic mineral projects, that time is now. At the end of March, President Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to boost production of EV battery minerals like lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and manganese. How and if this will effect any of the operations at the Salton Sea remains to be seen. But in general, the president's order gives the government more ways to support the extraction, processing and recycling of critical minerals and fund feasibility studies for new projects. The will is there from the general public wanting to go away from fossil fuels. Right? That's the number one. And that will's filtering up to a GM and a Ford and a Stellantis, the manufacturers. And that's filtering all the way through to government, hearing the same messaging. And the window of opportunity is now. We have an opportunity right now to create the gold standard plan, to be able to help inform other industries and how they evolve in today's society, a society that is trying to be more environmentally responsible, more equitable. Still though, there's some irony in the fact that even if Imperial Valley does transform into Lithium Valley, the electric cars where this lithium ends up will still be too expensive for most residents. They're certainly going to start coming down in price, but how long is that going to be before that happens? It's going to be the next generation. We need to have some benefits now. Environmental advocates would also like to see habitat restoration happen at a faster clip, and are pushing the state to expedite projects that involve creating lower salinity ponds on the dry lakebed, where fish and bird species can thrive. The state's goal is to create 47 miles of habitat and dust suppression projects by 2028. And with California's budget surplus, things are finally moving. I've been working on this a long time, so we're seeing more progress than we've seen in ever, really. There's a lot more that needs to be done, but we're starting to see some things happen. Environmentalists and community advocates alike are optimistic that the new industry will help shine a light on problems that have been plaguing the area for decades. And as mining projects in other parts of the country face community concern and backlash, it seems like lithium recovery at the Salton Sea could be the rare minerals project that unites all stakeholders. If it works. We have a president and an administration, the governor has a team, they want to see the win-win plan. And we have a legislator here locally that is certainly a champion of environmental justice. So we know that if ever we can create a win-win plan, it's right now.
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Channel: CNBC
Views: 620,257
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Keywords: CNBC, business, news, finance stock, stock market, news channel, news station, breaking news, us news, world news, cable, cable news, finance news, money, money tips, financial news, Stock market news, stocks, renewable energy, Learn Engineering batteries, how do batteries work, how does lithium ion work, us economy, usa, shortages, imports, trade, lithium shortage, tesla, EV, electric vehicles, electric cars, lithium demand, green environment, batteries, energy, Tesla, Rivian, Lucid
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Length: 15min 58sec (958 seconds)
Published: Wed May 04 2022
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