This company is planning a lithium empire from the shores of the Great Salt Lake
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/07/1125060/this-company-is-planning-a-lithium-empire-from-the-shores-of-the-great-salt-lake/?utm_medium=tr_social&utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=site_visitor.unpaid.engagement
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On a bright afternoon in August, the shore on the North Arm of the Great Salt Lake looks like something out of a science fiction film set in a scorching alien world. The desert sun is blinding as it reflects off the white salt that gathers and crunches underfoot like snow at the water’s edge. In a part of the lake too shallow for boats, bacteria have turned the water a Pepto-Bismol pink. The landscape all around is ringed with jagged red mountains and brown brush. The only obvious sign of people is the salt-encrusted hose running from the water’s edge to a makeshift encampment of shipping containers and trucks a few hundred feet away.
This otherworldly scene is the test site for a company called Lilac Solutions, which is developing a technology it says will shake up the United States’ efforts to pry control over the global supply of lithium, the so-called “white gold” needed for electric vehicles and batteries, away from China. Before tearing down its demonstration facility to make way for its first commercial plant, due online next year, the company invited me to be the first journalist to tour its outpost in this remote area, a roughly two-hour drive from Salt Lake City.
The startup is in a race to commercialize a new way to extract lithium from rocks, called direct lithium extraction (DLE). This approach is designed to reduce the environmental damage caused by the two most common traditional methods of mining lithium: hard-rock mining and brining.
Might as well destroy the world around us, everyone is just staring at their screens anyway.
*sarcasm
I bet they will be so happy, because perhaps they saw their friend that day!!!
Actually, Australia controls nearly 50% of global lithium production. Perhaps the US should be nicer to Australia.
this seems like a enormous step in the right direction. a much more environmentally friendly way over rock mining it. plus batteries using this lithium will inevitably save a bunch of petroleum extraction, refining, storage, and transport.
I don’t understand the other negative comment (screens) on here, just an ignorant take on a big move to make things better. I guess some people, if they had everything in the world would complain about nowhere to put it all.
Utah already has the largest open pit mine in the world the kinnecot Bingham canyon mine.