EnergySource’s technology is called Direct Lithium Extraction, or DLE, and it mines the resource by running salty brine through a filter that absorbs the metal. It’s the technology they plan to deploy at a plant being built along the Salton Sea.
Spomer said EnergySource intends to capture underground brine water at its plant and pump it back below ground after lithium is taken from it. He said this method is much better for the environment than evaporation ponds or open-pit mines. Both of those methods are used world-wide as a means of lithium mining.
“This will be the cleanest lithium in the world,” Spomer said. “From every measure. Water use, land use, emissions. It doesn't get any cleaner than this.” Spomer added that extracting lithium from underground brine water is an effective secondary use of geothermal plants in Imperial County. EnergySource has long operated a geothermal energy plant there. The boiling hot water that runs turbines and produces geothermal energy is the same water that will be filtered for its deposits of lithium.“I think it will happen,” he said.