No Pit, No Ponds: The Lithium Nobody Has to Dig For
Lithium is normally won by evaporating brine in ponds for a year or digging an open pit, which is why almost every project spends longer in planning than in construction. Beneath California's Salton Sea sits brine that is hot enough to run a power station and loaded with dissolved lithium, and it has been pumped up and pushed back down for decades. Two companies are now building plants to take the metal out on the way past. Here is how it works, and what has not been proven.
