Posted on 05/09/2022 10:27:49 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Save the endangered Salton Sea Brine Fly!
Amazing what a little well placed dynamite can do...
now try getting the permits...
It’s a natural low point, below sea level, so it has been a lake before, and has also been a dry lake bed before, in different eras.
+1
5.56mm
Yup, apparently the evidence shows it had previously dried out perhaps as recently as the 1700s, not so long ago. The tribal folklore supports a few different cycles of lake/nolake going back into late PreColumbian times.
Reminds me - I need to find a “Save Lake Bonneville” sticker...
Mining in the USA is dead. point in fact: Upper Wisconsin, where jobs are few and far and pay is low, has iron sands. A company proposed to mine it, and pay high wages at the time: like $15-30 hr. when most jobs up there were paying minimum wage ($7.28hr.), if you could find one.
The process would have worked like this - the surface sand would have been scooped up and fed into a hopper and on to a a station were magnets would remove the iron particles, and the sand returned - sort of environmental reclamation on the go.
The Wackos threatened people lives, vandalized the companies fences and survey shacks, ran to the legislature and after a huge battle, stopped it cold.
As a consequence Upper WI has not changed a wit: jobs are few and far and pay is low, if you can find one.
Most of them need to be taking lithium not protesting it.
Great idea. Sadly, it’s in California where good ideas go to quickly get legislated out of existence.
In California? BwaaaaaaaaHahahahahHahahaaAA!!!!!!!!!
That’s my understanding too - the Salton Sea was created by accident when a canal broke and no-one bothered to fix it for a couple of years. Additionally ah “generous” use of Colorado river water in surrounding farm lands generates runoff into the area. As I understand it, the Salton Sea is pretty messed up - highly saline, lots of fertilizers and chemicals from the runoff... Yet the moment someone wants to do something with it, something that might even improve the area, I guarantee you there are “environmentalists” already planning a campaign of BS they’ll use to attempt to block it.
You are an older than dirt, but still a thinking stinking man. I am getting there and closing in on you on age.
Don't know. From watching the video, the good news is that the Salton Sea could provide all the lithium that the USA needs.
The bad news is that very little will be produced in the next few years until extraction is ramped up. And there are no plants capable of making use of the extracted lithium in the area, so it will be shipped off to Asia (China) where they do have the plants to make battery grade lithium into batteries. In the short term, it's a win for China. In the long term, China will buy up land and build factories to then control this lithium supply.
IIRC there is a lithium laced drinking fountain in Corvalis, Oregon - right next to the university.
West Texas has enough lithium for the entire world. There is over 100,000 wells on flow back in the Permian basin. The amounts of lithium in the flow back water is staggering. The average oil to water ratio in the Permian is six bbl of salt water to in a bbl oil equivalent. Oil wells are in actuality contaminated salt water wells with the hydrocarbons as a byproduct of the water flow. The oil has value and is sold the salt water is a liability and; Currently it is just pumped back down a SWD well and thrown away one of my alma mater is working hard to change this. GO HORNS!
They need it.
And they will get their in their EVs and stream the video with their iPhones, and the irony will bounce of their ping pong ball heads.
Hot brine is obtained from wells in a geothermal zone a few miles away. The hot brine is kept under pressure then upon reaching the plant, flashed to a low pressure using the produced steam to drive turbines. Turbine shafts spin the generators to produce the electricity.
Controlling corrosion and scaling of metals in very challenging. Expensive metallurgies are required and chemicals are added to the brine and steam to reduce and control corrosion and scaling to acceptable levels. In a nut shell, the water chemistry data was very worrisome. A worst case was that the plant was being destroyed or at least would have excessive maintenance downtime.
My partner in this work was a hotshot in water treatment chemicals and power plants. I was along to look into some rare microbiological factors that could be a piece in solving the puzzle. We were in a specialized R&D group dealing with industrial water and wastewater treatment.
We got to El Centro, CA Monday and were at the plant Tuesday AM. Spent a long day in the lab. For the next 2-3 days, nothing for me to do. Like watching grass grow. So as my habit when I'm in a downtime stretch, I went to the control room to hang out with the operators in the control room. If you ever want to find out anything in a plant or facility of any kind, hangout with operators.
We were talking about the cooling water system and it was mentioned that they used the cooling tower pumps and water to supply the fire suppression system. Talking further, I found out that they used the fire monitors to wash the process pads down. This surprised me as monitors put out a few thousand gpm flow. Makeup water to the cooling towers to replace evaporative loss was condensed spent steam from the gas turbines.
At dinner that night, I recounted the weekly cooling water usage for pad wash down to my buddy. He grabbed a napkin and started scribbling numbers. Discovery! The pad wash down loss accounted for the screwy data that made folks think the plant was being destroyed. Lol.. This water use had not been factored into the engineering detail.
Next morning, there was a weekly senior person operating meeting scheduled and we were going to present the brilliant discovery. The engineering manager mentioned that he had discontinued fire monitor usage for pad water usage effective that day. Interesting coincidence. We didn't bring up our own finding on this in the meeting as planned but it came out a few weeks later in the written report.
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