Lithium May Open A Door For U.S. Energy Autonomy

The saltwater lake, Salton Sea, can go up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and the agricultural runoff that has dumped chemicals into it for decades has put residents’ health at risk from harmful dust.

The billion-dollar drilling operation will not only improve an underprivileged region but will also help the United States become more energy independent through the discovery of lithium in the brine.

“You can bring that brine to the surface” stated Jim Turner, chief operating officer for Controlled Thermal Resources, the company conducting the project. “You have a lot of energy in the form of heat that you can use to do work.”

Geothermal energy generation has been established for some time, but this project will double dip by producing lithium from brine. In today’s world, most of the lithium used in batteries is sourced from South America and Australia, and then exported to China for processing and incorporation into batteries.

Lithium might become the “white gold” of the future, and producing it in California could eliminate U.S. dependence on Chinese supply. “It will be the largest lithium production in the U.S., and it may end up being the largest lithium production facility globally,” said Turner.

According to the Imperial Irrigation District, there are currently 10 geothermal plants and two lithium extraction operations active in Salton Sea.

The area has the highest unemployment rate in California and despite the fact that the project might bring thousands of new jobs to the community, locals desire to know more about the project before supporting it.

Additional taxes will be collected by the Imperial Irrigation District to fund the district’s water supply investments.

According to University of California professor Dr. Michael McKibben, said the project seems”amazingly clean.”

“In Australia and China, they’re mainly mining hard rock lithium, so they have to have open pit mines where they blast rock with dynamite, and they have to crush that rock,” he said. “This method of producing lithium is really amazingly clean because the brine’s already been brought to the surface. It’s already having the steam taken out of it to run turbines and make electricity.”

Original source material for this article taken from here