Recent progress, economic potential, and environmental benefits of mineral recovery geothermal brine treatment systems

Lithium Production from North American Brines

“…Figure 1 shows a list of major geothermal and non-geothermal brines in the US and North America (Grant, 2019). Geothermal brines refer to hot, concentrated saline solutions that flow through hot rocks and are used to generate electricity via geothermal power plants (Al Radi et al, 2022). These brines mostly consist of water, while also being rich in major elements and minerals such as potassium, arsenic, boron, silica, and most critically, lithium (Al Radi et al, 2022;Stringfellow & Dobson, 2021;Warren, 2021).…”

“…Geothermal brines refer to hot, concentrated saline solutions that flow through hot rocks and are used to generate electricity via geothermal power plants (Al Radi et al, 2022). These brines mostly consist of water, while also being rich in major elements and minerals such as potassium, arsenic, boron, silica, and most critically, lithium (Al Radi et al, 2022;Stringfellow & Dobson, 2021;Warren, 2021). The extraction of these elements and minerals from geothermal brines is useful as it provides alternative sources of their supply, as well as important in order to avoid their harmful impacts on geothermal power plant components (Al Radi et al, 2022).…”

“…These brines mostly consist of water, while also being rich in major elements and minerals such as potassium, arsenic, boron, silica, and most critically, lithium (Al Radi et al, 2022;Stringfellow & Dobson, 2021;Warren, 2021). The extraction of these elements and minerals from geothermal brines is useful as it provides alternative sources of their supply, as well as important in order to avoid their harmful impacts on geothermal power plant components (Al Radi et al, 2022). Examples of such harmful impacts are corrosion of power plant equipment and scaling inside pipes that can damage this equipment and reduce its heat transfer efficiency (Al Radi et al, 2022).…”

“…The extraction of these elements and minerals from geothermal brines is useful as it provides alternative sources of their supply, as well as important in order to avoid their harmful impacts on geothermal power plant components (Al Radi et al, 2022). Examples of such harmful impacts are corrosion of power plant equipment and scaling inside pipes that can damage this equipment and reduce its heat transfer efficiency (Al Radi et al, 2022). Neupane and Wendt (2017) analyzed the data for over 2,000 samples of geothermal fluids in the US from USGS (United States Geological Survey) and other sources, and reported that only 1% of samples showed significant Li content (> 20 mg/kg) (Stringfellow & Dobson, 2021).…”

“…On average, non-geothermal brines have lower Li content than their geothermal brine counterparts in the Salton Sea KGRA (Warren, 2021). However, since both geothermal and non-geothermal brines are brownfield brines they offer opportunities to use existing resources and infrastructure for production of Li-chemicals (Li2CO3 and LiOH.H2O) from existing resources (Al Radi et al, 2022;Grant, 2019;Stringfellow & Dobson, 2021;Warren, 2021).…”