Here’s more on the chance to bring back California’s forgotten valley and at the same time restore the Salton Sea: Long a hub of geothermal power production, a forgotten backwater of Southern California known as the Salton Sea, is a bountiful reservoir of lithium, is being dubbed “Lithium Valley.” The silvery-white metal is now in huge demand as it is used in electric vehicle batteries. Ben Tracy reports.
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/californias-lithium-valley-on-…
OTFoolish
Doing anything productive with the Salton would be a help. The “sea” has been shrinking for years as it no longer receives as much water runoff from surrounding farms. Salinity is so high that many of the fish species have died off. Fertilizer runoff from the farms helps produce huge algae blooms.
It crossed my mind, a number of years ago, to use the lake to raise algae that can be harvested to produce oil.
Last note, the Sea is not naturally occurring. It resulted from a breach in a canal in 1905.
Steve
Hot, hot, hot but plenty of Colorado river water for ag.
The Imperial Valley is a major Agriculture area. Huge % of veggies produced in the US come from there.
El Centro is the “big” city there. Or as we called it in the Navy “El Sweato.”
I’ve seen it regularly be 100F by 10AM on the dove opener Sep 1st.
NAF El Centro is where the Blue Angels go for off season training. Probably still the divert airfield for MCAS Miramar (formerly NAS Miramar, aka Fightertown USA) on those days fog shuts down ops in Mira Mesa.
Along with the water from this aquifer being loaded with Lithium it also contains other recoverable minerals like Cobalt. The key to making this work is that the heat of this water makes it completely self-contained as far as energy needs.
Also a side benefit is the end product is purified water which can be put back into the "Sea’ to dilute the brine that is currently present.
OTFoolish
Also a side benefit is the end product is purified water which can be put back into the "Sea’ to dilute the brine that is currently present.
If the output of the plant is fresh water, the farmers and cities will want it. There used to be enough fresh water inflow to the “sea” to sustain it, but that water is all going to the farms and cities now.
Steve