This approach, where hot brine is used to generate electricity, and dissolved lithium salts are then separated from it, allows low-impact mining to be combined with renewable energy production.
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Interesting… pbs news hour was only concerned with the water usage. And how they are going to take 2 billion gallons of water out of the Colorado river
Where is that water going? Are they just letting it evaporate?
Not sure what the PBS piece had, but without a big injection of water the Salton sea will evaporate, leaving behind a large toxic salt flat. Could just be refilling it
Right. Maybe I’ve got Dune on the brain, but is there no (eff me) cost effective way to recapture any of that evaporation and return or reuse it?
Not that it really matters….
Not from the Salton Sea; it’s a huge inland lake which has progressed from fresh to salty as water has evaporated from its surface.
The Salton Sea is already halfway to being a Superfund site. May as well finish the job.
Ohh no, the ecology of our poor artificial lake we made by accident must be preserved at all costs./s
The Salton Sea is only at 4.4g per hundred gallons, meanwhile the north arm of the Great Salt Lake is over seven times saltier at 31.7, and Ethiopia is up to 43.3. Personally, i’m in favor of putting a desal plant on the canal and dumping the brine into the Salton Sea, let’s pump up that number and see how high we can get it before it’s economical to dry it for salt and take some of the load off of the Great Salt Lake. Like, are we really going to let Ethiopia beat us at the record for saltiest sea?