Potential economic values of minerals in brines of identified hydrothermal systems in the US

Conference · Fri Sep 01 04:00:00 EDT 2017

OSTI ID:1402042

Neupane, Ghanashyam; Wendt, Daniel S.

Geothermal resources have been used as a clean and sustainable baseload power for a long time. However, the upfront deployment costs of geothermal technologies are high. Various approaches are considered to make geothermal energy more economically attractive for developers. One potential approach is to have an additional revenue stream through recovery minerals from the large volume of brine that is used to generate power at geothermal sites. Geothermal brines interact with rocks for a long time at high temperature and pick up minute levels of various minerals, such as SiO2, Li, Mn, Cs, etc. In this paper, we assess the mineral contents in brines of several identified hydrothermal resource areas in the US. The compositions of geothermal brines were assembled from various sources whereas the brine mass flow rates of the potential power plants in those hydrothermal areas were obtained from GETEM simulations. Our study shows that several value-adding minerals could be available for recovery from the geothermal brines in the US. Specially, potential revenues from recovery of Au, Cs, Rb, Li, and SiO2 look very promising for several hydrothermal systems. However, several outstanding technological, financial, and market challenges as well as site-specific challenges (e.g., chemistry, sustainability, etc.) need to be evaluated for economic recovery of targeted minerals.

• Research Organization: Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
• DOE Contract Number: AC07-05ID14517
• OSTI ID: 1402042
• Report Number(s): INL/CON-17-42196
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY
Geothermal brines
brine mining
mineral recovery