Lithium plant to bring 400 jobs to Imperial Valley
http://www.desertsun.com/story/tech/science/energy/2015/01/11/lithium-plant-bring-jobs-imperial-valley/21612193/[font face=Serif][font size=5]Lithium plant to bring 400 jobs to Imperial Valley[/font]
Sammy Roth, The Desert Sun 5:47 p.m. PST January 11, 2015
[font size=3]Tesla Motors isnt coming to town, but plans to extract enormous amounts of lithium near the Salton Sea are steaming toward reality.
Simbol Materials will soon start construction on a large-scale lithium plant in Calipatria, which the company says will employ 400 people during an 18-month construction period and between 120 and 150 people once finished. Many of those high-wage jobs could go to residents of the Imperial Valley, one of the states most impoverished areas.
The Pleasanton-based company has spent a year and a half demonstrating its innovative and top-secret process for
extracting lithium from geothermal brine, a leftover of geothermal energy production by the southern shore of the Salton Sea. Lithium is a key ingredient in the batteries used by many electric automakers, and the prospect of abundant lithium which is now largely produced overseas
caught Teslas attention last year.
But even though Tesla decided to build its massive battery factory
in Nevada rather than the California desert, Simbol could still become a major supplier for Tesla and other electric vehicle manufacturers. Tracy Sizemore, Simbols vice president of business development, has said that he expects full-scale production to begin in 2018 and that if all goes well, the company could eventually build 10 lithium plants.
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