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Courtesy of Simbol Materials
Energy & Sustainability » News
Geothermal Power Plants Could Help
Produce Lithium for Electric Cars
A new process aims to extract lithium from the brines used to generate electricity in a
geothermal power plant
By David Biello | September 29, 2011
An industrial add-on to geothermal power
plants near the Salton Sea in California
could one day produce the lithium that is
required for electric car batteries. Already,
Simbol Materials, the company behind the
process, has begun purifying lithium from
conventional mining operations in
Argentina, Chile and elsewhere for the
global battery market at a demonstration
facility in Brawley, Calif.
"We developed the technology and the
process to take the brines coming out of
geothermal power plants' post–power
production and harvest lithium, manganese,
zinc and, maybe in the future, some other
materials, and we convert those into usable
compounds," says Simbol CEO Luka Erceg.
"We're essentially leveraging the best
renewable resource and co-producing
strategic materials."
After geothermal power plants pump up a hot brine—water and dissolved salts from
underground—and use its heat to make steam to spin a turbine and generate
electricity, Simbol would borrow the still warm fluid for roughly 90 minutes. A
pipeline would carry the brine through a series of processes that remove the silica in
the brine (it would otherwise foul the works) and then use a series of membranes,
filters and adsorption materials to extract valuable elements like lithium. The
extraction method was developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which
is primarily funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Simbol then adds water to
make up for the lost material and sends it back to the geothermal power plant for
re-injection underground.
The company plans to expand its initial lithium purification facility in 2012 as well as
begin construction on the geothermal-tied version as an addition to such power plants
being built in the region by EnergySource. Already, there are 10 geothermal power
plants in the Imperial Valley. "You can produce 16,000 metric tons of lithium
carbonate for every 50-megawatt geothermal power plant," Erceg notes.
As a result of re-injection, the company will not be left with the residue from
traditional lithium mining. Plus, instead of relying on hard rock mining as is typical of
production today, Simbol lets the hot water of the subsurface Salton Sea do the work
of leaching the materials out of the rock as well as purifying them into salts—a process
that involves evaporating water from lithium ponds for other producers around the
world, including in the U.S.
Also, the company would not need to purchase soda ash to enable production of
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lithium carbonate, as is typically done today. Instead, Simbol will take advantage of
waste carbon dioxide from the geothermal power plant itself to create the material.
Another economic advantage of Simbol's lithium process is its location: a mere 320
kilometers from southern California's three major ports and not thousands of meters
above sea level, as are the major mines in South America that provide most of the
world's lithium today. It remains to be seen, however, if Simbol's product can compete
with that generated by the big producers in Argentina, Australia, Chile and, in the
future, Bolivia.
The Salton Sea brine contains a host of other elements, and Simbol hopes to extend
the extraction process to manganese and zinc—also used in batteries and metal
alloys—as well as potassium, which is a vital nutrient and fertilizer, among other
applications. "This brine has got half the periodic table in it and that's a good
news–bad news situation," Erceg says, noting that cesium, rubidium and silver might
also be produced the same way. The company is also exploring options for using the
process's waste silica—more commonly known as sand—in the cement industry.
But the 500 metric tons per year of lithium from this initial purification facility will
not be going to U.S.-based battery-makers, at least not yet. Instead, the ITOCHU
Corp., a Japanese partner of Simbol, will sell the purified lithium to battery-makers on
the other side of the Pacific Ocean. "The initial output of this plant, we expect to go to
Asia," Erceg notes. "The reality is, today, for lithium ion batteries, manufacturing still
means Asia."
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Comments
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September 29, 2011, 3:15 PMJamesDavis
Why can't America build that purification plant at each geothermal plant and use the lithium and
other minerals to make batteries here and pay for it with the other minerals extracted from the
brine? It seems it would be a win win for both geothermal and lithium batteries in this country.
And that seems to be a very easy way to mine lithium. Why can't America think of these things
first?
Report as Abuse | Link to This
September 29, 2011, 3:16 PMJamesDavis
Why can't America build that purification plant at each geothermal plant and use the lithium and
other minerals to make batteries here and pay for it with the other minerals extracted from the
brine? It seems it would be a win win for both geothermal and lithium batteries in this country.
And that seems to be a very easy way to mine lithium. Why can't America think of these things
first?
Report as Abuse | Link to This
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October 2, 2011, 9:35 PMGord Davison  JamesDavis
Because america's government is manipulated by powerful industries that work for their own
profitability.
Report as Abuse | Link to This
October 19, 2011, 9:19 AMhamidsadeghipour
Take the periodic table as columns of 2,8,816,16,…with the H, Li, Na, K, Rb, on the top of The
columns respectively. You have on the second diagonal Li, Mg, Sc, and what the exploratory
organizations didn’t say Zr,…
On the first diagonal you have: H, Be, Al, Ti, Nb,..
On the third: Na, Ca, Y, Hf….
Nobody is to say which one appear after digging the wells.
Report as Abuse | Link to This
October 19, 2011, 9:20 AMhamidsadeghipour
sorry for mistake of 816
Take the periodic table as columns of 2,8,8,16,16,…with the H, Li, Na, K, Rb, on the top of The
columns respectively. You have on the second diagonal Li, Mg, Sc, and what the exploratory
organizations didn’t say Zr,…
On the first diagonal you have: H, Be, Al, Ti, Nb,..
On the third: Na, Ca, Y, Hf….
Nobody is to say which one appear after digging the wells.
Report as Abuse | Link to This
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