Lithium Extraction from Geothermal Brines in the Salton Sea Region; Effects of a Renewable Energy Transition on the Blue Collar Labor Market

As humanity works to deploy renewable energy over fossil fuels to avert irreversible climate change we as a society will need to resolve several critical social and technical challenges. One of the largest technical barriers to widespread adoption of renewable energy is matching supply and demand with intermittent generation technologies. Energy storage, including lithium-ion batteries, is a promising solution to this issue. However, existing lithium supplies in the United States are primarily in geothermal brines that need new extraction technologies to utilize. One of several social barriers to renewable energy adoption is the shifts in the labor market caused by transitioning away from fossil fuels. Concern over job opportunities fuels political headwinds against renewable-favoring energy policy. These two issues will both need to be addressed if the United States is to achieve a swift transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
Extraction of lithium stored in geothermal brines, such as those in the Salton Sea region of California can increase American domestic lithium production in the face of rising demand. These brines are already used for geothermal power in the region, allowing lithium to be extracted from the brine before reinjection. This extraction can be achieved by utilizing an iron phosphate bed that selectively adsorbs lithium over other cations in the brine. The captured lithium can then be released and precipitated to battery-grade lithium carbonate with the addition of sodium carbonate.
This process delivers 94% of the lithium in the brine as 99.5% pure battery-grade lithium carbonate. However, the process as written makes several significant assumptions and is not projected to be profitable. Most of the issues arise from the use of citrate ions as a redox mediator in the initial adsorption process. The high cost of citrate and its insolubility when reacting with dissolved calcium in the brine require it to be replaced for the process to become viable, barring a major increase in the price of lithium carbonate. In the current market, it is suggested that this production facility is not built without major changes.
Labor concerns are an important facet of the renewable energy transition if leaders want to achieve this change equitably and avoid backlash. This paper investigates how a transition away from fossil fuels will affect the blue collar labor market and what these effects mean for the momentum of the transition. This is important to understand not only to gather public support for policies advancing the energy transition but also to ensure the country effectively utilizes human resources when deploying new energy technologies. Disparities in job quantity, skills, location, and wages between the fossil fuel and renewable energy industries have been explored.
The renewable energy industry is expected to supply a similar number of jobs, offer only slightly lower wages, and require comparable skills to jobs in the fossil fuel industry. The renewable energy transition will also create other jobs not directly related to energy generation that may be more appealing to some current fossil fuel workers. The largest barrier to job transition is expected to be location as the geographical distribution of fossil fuels and renewable energy resources differ. Concerns about job opportunities with respect to replacing the fossil fuel industry with renewable energy are significant among current working union members, but a lower priority for the nation in general.

School of Engineering and Applied Science

Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering

Technical Advisor: Eric Anderson

STS Advisor: Pedro Francisco

Technical Team Members: Jasper Bennett, Patrick Boyd, Nicholas Goldstein, Mia Park