Pennsylvania could be at the center of America’s new ‘white gold rush’ with the discovery of a major untapped source of lithium in the state.
Government scientists have shown that they can filter the precious metal from the state’s shale gas wastewater: pulling tons of lithium per day, with little left behind.
They concluded that Pennsylvania alone could produce nearly half of the total US demand for lithium — starting in the first year — supplying this key compound that’s needed to power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles to solar panels.
A project on this scale could make Pennsylvania a rust-belt Saudi Arabia, ending US dependence on lithium from China, which now controls 90 percent of the market.
And unlike many new lithium-mining proposals, which have threatened scarce water resources from Arkansas to Colorado, this process would make a virtue of the high-pressure water already used by the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of natural gas.
With 72 proposed lithium mines across the US, the discovery could help reduce local ecological fallout as America shifts away from ‘greenhouse gas’-emitting fossil fuels.
Cali’s white gold mine: Lithium reservoir in Imperial Valley worth staggering $540bn could launch US to battery dominance… but it’s run by an AUSTRALIAN energy firm
Energy firm from Brisbane has been developing the lithium project since 2016
The Australian geothermal energy group later ‘redomiciled’ becoming a US firm
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13169261/California-lithium-run-australian-company.html