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- Feb 16, 2016
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Pennsylvania is sitting on major untapped lithium 'white gold mine' that could generate new billion-dollar industry, government study finds
Giant, multi-billion-dollar source of lithium found under Pennsylvania
Over 1,200 tons of lithium could be recovered per year from Pennsylvania's natural gas 'fracking' wastewater alone, according to US National Energy Technology Lab
www.dailymail.co.uk
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.
~Snip~
While geologists had long known that lithium was present in the mineral content around these shale gas deposits, an accurate estimation only became feasible as years of these mandated reports came in.
'There hadn't been enough measurements to quantify the resource,' Mackey explained. 'We just didn't know how much was in there.'
But an accidental benefit had occurred, because lithium-based mineral compounds like lithium chloride and lithium carbonate are water soluble.
The simple act of injecting fracking wells with high-pressured water has acted to pull much of that lithium metal out of the rock and into the fracking wastewater.
Water in underground aquifers, as Mackey put it, have been 'dissolving rocks for hundreds of millions of years.'
'Essentially, the water has been mining the subsurface,' he said.
~Snip~
Approximately 40 of the 72 proposed lithium mines in the US are set for Nevada, America's driest state, and 80 percent of them would sit on water supplies deemed at risk of low water levels, according to an analysis by the Howard Center for investigative journalism.
Read More
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/science...alifornia-lithium-run-australian-company.html
Commentary:Wow! A by-product of 'Fracking'. Who would a thunk it? Just imagine some of that precipitated liuthium can be used to treat all those mentally disturbed.
Remember part of the Marcellus strata extends into New York State. The Govenor has rejected Fracking in the State.
Not to worry though, Biden will send Blinken to negotiate a deal sell the rights of U.S. Lithium mining to China. along with his regular 10% kickback.