California-based Simbol Materials is set to become the world's newest entrant to the lithium carbonate market as it plans to start a 500 tpa high-purity plant within the next month. The group has developed technology to extract lithium from geothermal effluent brines to produce lithium and other compounds and will process 99.999% purity lithium carbonate as a derivative product. Simbol will process lithium extracted from a geothermal power plant at the Salton Sea, southern California, in a process that eliminates the solar evaporation stage critical to the world's leading brine producers. A three-fold capacity expansion is expected to be announced soon.
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