California-based EnergySource Minerals (ESM) has announced a binding lithium supply contract with Ford Motor Company. Under the contract, ESM will be supplying sustainably produced lithium hydroxide from ESM’s Project ATLiS site in Imperial Valley, California where lithium is extracted from a geothermal brine resource.
Project ATLiS in California’s Salton Sea is expected to produce approximately 20,000 metric tons of lithium annually, which will quadruple the current U.S. supply of domestic lithium and is enough material to build around 500,000 EVs for the auto industry per year.
A key technology behind ESM’s Project ATLiS is the patented ILiAD platform. ILiAD will efficiently process lithium from lithium-bearing brine resources, including the geothermal brine resource in the Salton Sea Geothermal Resource Area. The innovation will allow ATLiS to connect to an existing operational geothermal power facility and remove the lithium from the brine, after it’s been used to generate geothermal power.
The ILiAD technology will dramatically reduce the water footprint of alternative approaches, will not consume reagents, will demonstrate order-of-magnitude longer operating life and achieve higher lithium recovery rates than others to date.
Extensive additional pilot operations have demonstrated that ILiAD can be widely used on lithium brine resources across the world. ILiAD’s application at Project ATLiS will highlight the scaled commercial viability of this state-of-the-art technology.