Lithium from geothermal brine key ingredient to Tesla’s Gigafactory ambitions
Geothermal facility at the Salton Sea, California (source: flickr/ Aquafornia, creative commons)
Francisco Rojas
5 Aug 2014
Geothermal energy can provide Tesla with two crucial components for their new plant, renewable energy and lithium for batteries.
In ThinkGEOENERGY Magazine Issue 1 we talk about “mining” geothermal brine and talked about the development of Simbol Materials, a Salton Sea based company that plans to extract Lithium from geothermal brine of nearby Hudson Ranch geothermal power plant of EnergySource. This might now be the key ingredient to the much talked about Gigafactory, planned by electric car manufacturer Tesla and his CEO Elon Musk.
With about $5 billion in investment planned, Tesla is currently asking for state support of up to $500 million for its factory with a potential location in either Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and California.
In a recent article by a local news source, both needs for Tesla could be covered in the Salton Sea, the need for renewable energy in the form geothermal power and lithium as a byproduct of the brine. The same source reinforces this idea stating that “The Salton Sea Known Geothermal Resource has 1,700 untapped megawatts. The area is a prime location for Tesla, which relies on a resource that can be pulled from geothermal power plants: lithium.”
To read the full article, please follow the link below:
Source: The Sacramento Bee Website
