| Title | Modelling Results from the Lithium Valley Project in the Salton Sea geothermal field |
|---|---|
| Authors | Theo Renaud |
| Year | 2026 |
| Conference | World Geothermal Congress |
| Keywords | Waiwera, Lithium, Geothermal reservoir, Uncertainty Quantification, chloride. |
| Abstract | The Salton Sea Geothermal Field (SSGF) is one of the world’s largest geothermal resources for energy production and show high content of dissolved minerals such as lithium of high interest. The Lithium Valley Project in SSGF is looking at assessing the values and potential to exploit the deep geothermal system for geothermal energy production and the lithium-rich geothermal brine as a source of lithium for battery production. Understanding the high salinity and dissolved solid content dynamics in the geothermal fluids is challenging to assess to operate and forecast the management of the SSGF for geothermal reservoir models. We present the results of the modelling of the SSGF field for the Phase 2 of the Lithium Valley project. We use a numerical model and a chloride-NCG-water equation of state with lithium as a passive tracer. Publicly available scientific data and a tight integration of the conceptual modelling into the numerical model helped to refine the understanding of the deep geothermal system. We show the results of the forecasts with uncertainty quantification of the main parameters. The inclusion of uncertainty quantification in the scenarios are used to deliver ranges of probability in the future production for lithium extraction and energy power production in the area. The results provide an improved understanding of the SSGF and demonstrate the capability of uncertainty quantification for providing robust ranges of forecasts, including rates of lithium production to plan sustainable geothermal energy and lithium extraction. |