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Lithium is needed for battery that will go into Electric Cars. Deep in the Southern California desert, an enormous drill rig taps into what might be the energy of the future.
Temperature levels in the region can reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and locals live under the danger of harmful dust triggered by years of agricultural runoff depositing chemicals into the Salton Sea, a saltwater lake. However in the salt water of an aquifer under the lake lies lithium, a crucial ingredient for electric vehicle batteries, and the billion-dollar drilling project assures to not only transform an impoverished region, but also help the United States get energy independence. A geothermal power station along the coast of the Salton Sea near Calipatria, Calif., on Dec. 15, 2021. Vapor increases from a geothermal power station along the Salton Sea near Calipatria, Calif., " You can bring that salt water to the surface" stated Jim Turner, chief running officer for Controlled Thermal Resources, the company carrying out the job. "You have a lot of energy in the kind of heat that you can use to do work." Geothermal energy production has actually been around for many years, but this effort will double dip by extracting lithium from the brine. Much of the lithium used today originates from Australia and South America and is delivered to Asia, where it's improved and utilized in batteries, which are primarily made in China. With automakers shifting to electric lorries, lithium might become the "white gold" of the future, and extracting it in California might minimize and even remove U.S. reliance on Chinese production, Turner and other professionals say.
The Controlled Thermal Resources drilling rig in Calipatria, Calif. " It will be the largest lithium production in the U.S., and it may wind up being the largest lithium production center globally," Turner stated. Presently, 10 geothermal plants and two other lithium extraction tasks are running at the Salton Sea, according to the Imperial Irrigation District. The lake formed in 1905 when the Colorado River overruned and flooded a hot basin, referred to as the Salton Sink, over a two-year duration. In the 1950s, it grew as a tourist destination, drawing celeb visitors, consisting of Frank Sinatra. Today, the resorts and marinas are long gone, and desert winds carry hazardous dust from agricultural chemicals into the lake, about 150 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Although the task could bring thousands of tasks to the location, which has the greatest joblessness rate in the state at 17 percent, some locals wish to know more about the strategies prior to completely supporting it. " I do not understand much," said Ruben Hernandez, who owns the Buckshot Deli and Diner near the extraction site. "They state they are going to bring a huge plant." But he also stresses the task will produce more pollution. " A lot of individuals resemble, particularly the kids and old people, getting asthma," Hernandez said. "You know, asthma, allergic reactions, all that stuff."
Michael McKibben, an associate professor emeritus in geology at the University of California, Riverside, stated the process is "incredibly clean." " In Australia and China, they're mainly mining acid rock lithium, so they have to have open pit mines where they blast rock with dynamite, and they have to squash that rock," he said. "This method of producing lithium is really astonishingly tidy since the salt water's currently been given the surface. It's already having actually the steam gotten of it to run turbines and make electricity." The Imperial Irrigation District will also collect taxes on the extraction that can be used to buy the area's water needs.
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