California’s Salton Sea identified to contain one of the world’s largest lithium reserves

A group of researchers recently published their study concerning a vast geothermal lithium reserve that was found under Salton Sea, California.

Furthermore, lithium is a critical metal in the production of lithium-ion batteries, the demand for which is expected to skyrocket within the coming years, due to the green energy transition and the rise of electric vehicles.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc., has noted how lithium is a fairly common and abundant element.

However, its production has so far been hampered by time consuming, insufficient mining techniques. Characteristically, lithium is usually harvested from ponds, and the process can take more than a year to complete, while achieving a 50% extraction efficiency.

In addition to the aforementioned, the United States imports about half its yearly consumed lithium from abroad.

So, the Slaton Sea area was recently identified to contain 4.1 million metric tons of lithium, while the full reservoir’s potential has not yet been fully explored, but preliminary studies indicate that it could be holding up to as much as 18 million metric tons of lithium carbonate equivalent.

This reserve would be enough to cover electric vehicle demand in the US for some decades.

To make things even better, this reserve is contained in a geothermal brine, which is currently being harvested, and has a 400 MW capacity, with a future potential 2,950 MW capacity.

This is rather important as a new technology called direct lithium extraction is on the rise, which can extract lithium from brine water in a matter of days, while also recycling the used water.

Summing up, this discovery would mean that the Salton Sea deposit has the potential to combine power generation with efficient lithium extraction that could cover domestic demand for decades.