“Ionic Mineral Technologies has discovered high concentrations of 16 critical minerals—including lithium, germanium, and cesium—in a clay deposit in Utah. The full extent of the find is unknown, but the company claims it could be ‘the most significant critical mineral reserve in the US,'” notes The Doomslayer.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Ionic Mineral Technologies was mining the clay in Utah when it chanced upon what could be the critical mineral equivalent of a gold mine.
Ionic MT had leased the land as part of its business producing nanosilicon for lithium-ion batteries, which are used in electric vehicles. But it found a host of other minerals, in what may be the most significant critical mineral reserve in the U.S…It discovered high grades of 16 different types of minerals, everything from lithium to alumina, germanium, rubidium, cesium, vanadium and niobium at the site in Utah’s Silicon Ridge…
Independent testing shows that the Utah deposit is made up of ‘a halloysite-hosted ion-adsorption clay,’ which essentially means it can be rich in minerals, the same kind of geological formation that supplies a big chunk of China’s rare earth production…
The company so far has drilled an area covering more than 600 acres to a depth of 100 feet, but there is much more to explore.
Utah’s Great Salt Lake could also provide a critical mineral. “America’s biggest saltwater lake may hold a key to the country’s energy future,” providing the lithium needed for things like electric car batteries, notes an earlier news report:
This summer, a California startup plans to start construction on a project to suck up water from the Great Salt Lake to extract one of its many valuable minerals: lithium, a critical ingredient in the rechargeable batteries used in electric vehicles. The water will then be reinjected back into the lake, which Lilac Solutions says addresses concerns about the damaging effects of mineral extraction…it will use a series of pipes to suck up 80,000 gallons of water a minute to harvest the mineral. The company plans to eventually produce up to 20,000 tons of battery-grade lithium a year at its site in northern Utah, located among fields of cattle and pickleweed.
The effort is one of dozens of projects across the U.S. racing to build up a domestic supply of lithium and other battery minerals, with adoption of electric vehicles expected to boom as part of the country’s transition to cleaner energy.
