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“Lithium Valley” project: enough
material for all batteries
RIVERSIDE County, Calif. — Sited
along the San Andreas earthquake
fault line, the Salton Sea lies just 52
miles from Southern California’s play-
ground of the rich and famous, Palm
Springs.
Desert oasis
In the 1950s and until the early ‘70s, the
area was a coveted tourist area with its
own beaches, motels, high-end restau-
rants and even its own yacht club. The
yacht club — closed and abandoned — is
still there, but the tourists are long gone.
The Salton Sea was created when flood-
ing of the Colorado River destroyed part of
a canal system, forcing millions of gallons
of water into the lowland area where the
Salton Sea now sits.
“ With nearly $1.2 million in support from
Decades ago, the Salton Sea was a favorite tourist spot. (LBL) First scientific effort
From vacation spot to toxic lake
Once a cherished vacation spot, 200 feet
below sea level, tourists abandoned the
Salton Sea after it started to become an
environmental catastrophe with rising
salinity and fertilizer runoff from nearby
farms.
Now, the Salton Sea geothermal field,
“Lithium Valley,” potentially holds enough
lithium to meet all of America’s domestic
battery needs, with enough left over to ex-
port some of it, according to the Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL).
APRIL 2022
LBL is among the participants in a new
project sponsored by the U.S. Department
of Energy (DOE).
There are currently 11 commercial plants
at the Salton Sea field producing geother-
mal energy, a clean, renewable form of
energy in which hot fluids are pumped up
from deep underground and the heat is
then converted to electricity.
Extract lithium
Normally the cooled fluid would simply be
reinjected underground, but the idea is
to first extract the lithium from the brine
before injecting it back.
With the push by California and many oth-
er states and countries to expand adoption
of electric vehicles (EVs), the demand for
batteries - and the lithium needed to make
those batteries – will skyrocket, LBL re-
ports.
DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office, sci-
entists from Berkeley Lab, UC Riverside,
and the Geologica Geothermal Group Inc.
will work together to both quantify and
characterize the lithium in this hypersaline
geothermal reservoir.
The project is the first comprehensive
scientific effort to map California’s Lithium
Valley and gain a detailed understanding
of the mineral-rich underground brine at
the Salton Sea geothermal system.
Using an electron microscope and other
advanced analytical tools, scientists hope
to learn the mineral sources of lithium and
whether the rocks will “recharge” the brine
with lithium after it has been extracted,
and to measure the environmental impact
of this extraction.
lbl.gov