Clean Technica - Tina Casey

Excerpt:

GM is still leaning on overseas suppliers, but the company states that it is working to build up its North American supply chain. Recycling is one way to do that. However, considering the skyrocketing demand for battery-type energy storage, more lithium mining is going to happen in the US, one way or another.

If that means more surface mining, that means more trouble on the environmental front. Lithium can also be extracted from brine, but the conventional method involves open air evaporation lagoons, and more trouble.

That’s the conventional method. One up-and-coming approach is a new system for extracting lithium from geothermal brine without the use of massive open air lagoons.

The new geothermal extraction system crossed the CleanTechnica radar last December, when the firm Controlled Thermal Resources revved up Stage One of a project at the lithium-rich Salton Sea in California, called the Hell’s Kitchen Lithium and Power project.

The first stage involves generating power, to the tune of about 50 megawatts in geothermal capacity. By 2024 CTR expects to start producing lithium hydroxide, without the impacts of evaporation or surface mining. CTR lists the following advantages:

• Small physical footprint

• No open-pit mining or evaporation ponds

• No tailings or overseas processing

• Fully integrated onsite process

• Powered by renewable energy and steam

• Near-zero CO2 emissions

Stellantis, for one, is already on board. Back in June the company signed a binding off-take agreement “for CTR to supplybattery grade lithium hydroxidefor use in Stellantis’ North American electrified vehicle production.”

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