Diagram of the process used by Controlled Thermal Resources to produce geothermal electricity and ... [+]
With the auto industry seemingly accelerating their launch plans for electric vehicles on an almost daily basis, actually figuring out who will buy all of these vehicles is just one part of a very big puzzle to solve for success. Before these vehicles hit the streets, manufacturers will have to build out a whole new supply chain. The current volume of battery production for EVs is just a small fraction of what will be needed to eventually supply nearly 100 million vehicles a year globally. Building more batteries will require more raw materials like lithium. That’s where Controlled Thermal Resources (CTR) comes in for General Motors.
GM through its Ultium Cells LLC joint venture with LG is currently building two lithium ion cell production plants with two more planned to be online by 2025. These four factories will have a combined capacity of 140 GWh per year of cells and that requires a lot of lithium. Most of the lithium used for batteries today comes from either South America or Australia and it is processed in China.
Given the supply chain disruptions that the economy has experienced over the past 18 months, that’s not a viable long term solution. Even without the disruptions, transporting all those materials around the world is not great for sustainability. Ideally you want as much of the raw material produced as close as possible to where it will be used.
There’s no shortage of lithium in most parts of the world but it’s just not being extracted. Last September, when Tesla held its battery day for investors, CEO Elon Musk discussed having locked up a major lithium supply in Nevada that it plans to process through new techniques for its batteries.
GM announced today that it will collaborate with CTR to produce lithium in California. CTR is developing a lithium extraction and power generation facility in the Hell’s Kitchen geothermal field in the Salton Sea. CTR has developed a closed loop process that extracts brine from the ground, separates the steam which is used to drive a turbine to generate electricity and also reacts the steam with the brine to separate lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate that are used for cell production. The water and brine are then pumped back into the ground.
Unlike traditional mining, this leaves no tailings and the whole process produces renewable energy with no carbon emissions. The first phase of the Hell’s Kitchen development is expected to start providing lithium in 2024.
