Lithium Valley: Recovering a Special Metal

KYMA - Vince Ybarra

Excerpt:

Lithium is a naturally occurring chemical element used to power batteries in electric vehicles, and so much more. 

Rod Colwell the CEO of CTR says it’s a geothermal treasure of opportunity.

“We’re eight thousand to 15 thousand feet below us where we’re standing right here is one of the largest lithium brine geothermal resources on the planet…if not the largest,” said Colwell.

Colwell says the Salton Sea is one of the most studied areas of land in the entire world due to lithium. Putting the body of water on the map for containing this special metal.

So how do they extract lithium from the Salton Sea?

“You bring up hot brine from deep down…hot water that has a lot of minerals in that water,” butt sot “and then we recover the lithium,” said Colwell.

Colwell says once lithium is recovered, the water is pumped back into the ground. Every gallon of water gets recycled up to eight times. The water that goes back into the ground will collect lithium over the course of 64 years, and after that time has passed, that water can be pulled from the ground and you can collect lithium again.

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