Companies have tried for decades to extract lithium, a key ingredient in batteries that power electric cars and store solar power, from the super-heated underground fluid at the southern end of the Salton Sea. One company now says they’ve figured it out.
Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia watched with ill-disguised frustration as a hearing aimed at expediting state projects to restore habitat and control dust storms at the shrinking Salton Sea instead dissolved into discussion of why the efforts were falling further behind schedule.
The goal has always been to extract minerals at some point during that process, before the brine is injected back into the underground reservoir. Eric Spomer, EnergySource’s president and chief executive, said his company has succeeded where others have failed by stringing together commercially proven technologies that have been used in mining and other industries.
EnergySource Chief Operating Officer Derek Benson leads a tour of the John L. Featherstone geothermal plant.is paired with a mechanical apparatus that “dramatically improves the efficiency of the sponge,” Spomer said. He called the combination a “game changer” that could be applied to mineral-rich brines around the world, improving lithium yields and dramatically reducing processing times.
Eight of the 10 geothermal plants owned by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy were built in the 1980s and 1990s, with the other two coming online in 2000. Since then, geothermal’s high price point has mostly ground development to a halt, even as California has demanded higher and higher levels of clean energy. The one exception is EnergySource’s Featherstone plant, which opened in 2012, at a time when solar power was still relatively expensive.
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