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EnergySource's "Project ATLiS" near the Salton Sea is expected to produce approximately 20,000 metric tons of lithium annually, the company said in a news release, which would quadruple the current U.S. supply of domestic lithium and is enough material to build around 500,000 EVs per year. Lithium is a critical component used to manufacture cathodes in EV batteries...

...EnergySource and two other companies are in various stages of developing technologies to extract lithium and other critical minerals from a vast geothermal brine reserve a mile to two miles deep underground at the Salton Sea. They say by using a long-proven "closed loop" system to pump the hot brine up and "flashing" off steam, then using proprietary technologies to separate out the lithium, they can produce it via far less destructive methods than hard rock mining or huge evaporation ponds used elsewhere.