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Energies 2021, 14, 6805 56 of 72 Simbol conducted a major research project examining the extraction and recovery of minerals from geothermal brines that was funded by the US Department of Energy and the California Energy Commission [129,130]. The project was a wide-ranging investigation of multiple processes directly and indirectly related to extraction of lithium from geothermal brine [129,130]. Since the objective of the investigators was to develop intellectual property, including patents (Table 7), some key information is missing from the technical reports and one report is partially redacted [129,130]; however, the major activities of the project are described. Simbol, Inc. operated research and development (R&D) facilities in California, in- cluding (1) a laboratory and manufacturing facility in Pleasanton, where a pilot lithium extraction plant was tested against synthetic brines; (2) a skid-mounted pilot plant that was used to test lithium extraction from geothermal brines at the CalEnergy Elmore geothermal power plant and the EnergySource Hudson Ranch (John Featherstone) power plant; and (3) a pilot facility for lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate production in Brawley, CA [129,130]. Activities conducted at these facilities are described below. Simbol also planned a larger R&D pilot plant facility at the EnergySource Hudson Ranch I geothermal power plant (Figure 23) [314]. This R&D facility was designed to receive brine flows of between 6 and 10 gallons per minute from the operating geothermal power plant and discharge treated brine that was depleted in silica, iron, lithium, zinc and manganese to an adjacent brine waste pond [320]. The facility planned to use scale inhibitors, flocculants, potable water, salt (sodium chloride), calcium hydroxide, soda ash (sodium carbonate), hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide [320]. The intention was for this facility to be operated as a commercial business [321,322]. Field pilot tests of a direct lithium extraction process were conducted by Simbol at two geothermal power plants in the Salton Sea KGRA [129,130]. A skid-mounted pilot plant was initially built and tested using synthetic solutions at the Pleasanton facility and then transported to the power plants for testing against real Salton Sea geothermal brines. Schematics and detailed descriptions of the pilot units were not included in the reports [129,130]. The pilot plant, initially consisting of a silica pretreatment process followed by a lithium extraction process, was first tested at the CalEnergy Elmore power plant over an approximately 125 day period [129,130]. At the Elmore test-site, the pilot was operated with Sorbent-P (see description in AlOH section) and possibly other sorbents at a temperature of 105 ◦C and a flow of 5 gallons per minute. Each test run was operated for approximately two weeks, but data from the Elmore pilot tests are not included in published reports [129,130]. It was reported that the results of the pilot testing at Elmore showed that initial testing with surrogate brines at the Pleasanton facility was not sufficient to predict operations using actual geothermal brines [130]. The test solutions used at Pleasanton did not contain manganese, which occurs in high concentrations in Salton Sea brines (Table 2), and during pilot tests with geothermal brines, manganese interfered with lithium extraction [323]. The pilot at the Elmore location used the Simbol sorptive silica removal process and it was reported that both iron and silica were removed to below measurable detection in the treated brine [130]. However, the sorption process was not considered economical and pilot tests at the Featherstone facility apparently used a precipitation process for silica control (see discussion above) [129,130]. The skid-mounted pilot plant was moved to the EnergySource John L. Featherstone power plant at Hudson Ranch and modified by the addition of unit processes for the pu- rification and concentration of recovered lithium chloride [129,130]. Purification included removing divalent and trivalent cations and boron from the recovered lithium chloride solution stripped from the sorbent [129,130]. How manganese or other constituents of the geothermal brine were managed was not specifically reported, but the purification step implies manganese was adsorbed with the lithium and removed during purification of the lithium chloride stream. The concentration step was not described, but the overall process was reported to produce a 35 to 40 weight-percent lithium chloride solution [130].PDF Image | Recovery of Lithium from Geothermal Brines
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