A new technique for sourcing lithium for batteries; and the survey results are in. Here's what geoscientists had to say about what fuels innovation in oil and gas.
Hello from Houston! I made the trip from Denver to H-Town for URTeC and am enjoying meeting some of you at AAPG’s booth when I’m not listening to the technical sessions!
So, on this tech conference Tuesday, let’s dive right in, my little sponges, and learn some more about brine extraction and the results of our own innovation survey!
Sarah Compton
Editor, Enspired
Direct Lithium Extraction in Salt Brines
IM Imagery/Shutterstock.com
The energy transition is driven by intermittent power sources, and batteries are playing a huge role. Finding raw materials for those batteries is problematic, however, even with all the great exploration geoscientists do!
Occidental has a subsidiary, TerraLithium, which uses a direct lithium extraction (DLE) method that pulls economic quantities of high-purity lithium from salt brines.
How it works:
TerraLithium uses a sorbent to which trace lithium binds.
Once the sorbent is loaded with lithium, the two are separated, and a high concentration of lithium chloride can be extracted.
TerraLithium claims more than a 99 percent capture efficiency.
What’s new: Oxy entered a joint venture with the renewables arm of Berkshire Hathaway to commercialize TerraLithium’s process using geothermal waste brine as feedstock.
Quick geo nerd-out: The waste brine for this latest demonstration test comes from the Salton Sea, where the Imperial Valley Geothermal Project is located, thanks to the Salton Buttes.
Why it matters:
Older, traditional methods of lithium extraction are carbon intensive and inefficient.
If this test is successful, Berkshire has said it will build, own, and operate more DLE facilities in California.
Gaining steam: Oxy isn’t the only energy company expanding to geothermal and brine extraction. ExxonMobil and Equinor are also jumping on the lithium brine bus.
Go deeper: To learn more about TerraLithium, read here.
A message from AspenTech
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Recall that we reviewed the SPE survey on what drives individual innovation a few weeks back. Their results indicated that professional seniority was a greater indicator of innovation than years of experience.
A dear reader pointed out the study likely reflected engineers’ experience and wondered if there would be a different result for geologists, so we set off to find out.
We had a tight timeframe, but we sent surveys out and managed to get about 57 responses!
Thank you to all who participated.
Those who didn’t: Next time, throw in your two cents! The more people who participate, the larger our sample size (and you can’t critique our sample size if you aren’t among those sampled…. party foul!).
The SPE study was done scientifically: ours is meant to be more fun and to give geoscientists an opportunity to be represented. Perhaps we’ll pursue a more legit study in the future, but the timeframe will be longer, and we’ll focus the questions more specifically to geoscience.
Results: Our results showed the opposite of the SPE study:
individual innovation is more closely tied to industry experience than managerial title.
There was a correlation between tenure in the industry and managerial position, but it wasn’t extremely tight. Broadly speaking, geoscientists can stay on a more technical path or opt for a managerial path, and this was reflected slightly in the demographic data.
The highest correlation was between innovative activities like non-routine work and tenure rather than managerial position in a company.
Some results are shown below. The x-axis uses a number key to make the data easier to analyze. 1 represents “to a very little extent,” while 5 represents “to a very large extent.”
If you walk 10 paces backward, you can see a clear upward trend where more experienced folks conduct a lot of work using their present knowledge. This is unsurprising, since more senior people have more experience to draw from!
Older, more experienced folks had a very little extent of work they carried out as if it were routine. Most rode in the middle.
The bottom line: More experienced workers have more knowledge to draw from but are doing less routine work: a great environment for innovation! Young pups are likely just trying to get their feet under them and figure out their daily professional duties.
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