Elon Musk breaks ground on Tesla lithium refinery in Texas

Tesla CEO Elon Musk joined forces with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to begin work on the electric car maker’s new lithium refinery site in Corpus Christi on Monday.

Tesla plans to invest $375 million to build the facility on the Gulf Coast that will help it secure a domestic supply of lithium hydroxide, a key component used to make batteries for its electric cars, household and utility batteries.

Musk said Tesla aims to produce enough battery-grade lithium at the refinery to make 1 million cars a year, and to produce more lithium than the rest of North American refining capacity combined there.

Albemarle mining company announced plans to invest $1.3 billion in a new project lithium treatment facility in South Carolina in March.

According to the filings with file Texas Office of the ComptrollerSpecifically, Tesla plans to build a “battery-grade lithium hydroxide refining facility” and “other facilities to support other types of battery material processing, refining, manufacturing, and ancillary manufacturing operations to support Tesla’s sustainable production line.”

In its papers, the company promises that “the process Tesla will use is innovative and designed to consume less hazardous reagents and create usable by-products compared to the conventional process.”

Musk claimed on Monday, “There are no toxic emissions or anything — you can live in the middle of the refinery and not suffer any ill effects.”

Tesla’s head of battery raw materials and recycling Turner Caldwell said at the event that the company will find “useful use opportunities” for a lithium by-product, which they expect to be mostly sand and limestone.

Refining ore into battery-grade lithium typically requires an industrial process that involves crushing the ore, heating it at a high temperature, and mixing it into a slurry with acids. Typically, one of the acids used in lithium processing is hydrochloric acid, which is a dangerous air pollutant in the United States. Clean Air Act.

Caldwell and Musk did not disclose the specific chemistry the company would rely on for the treatment.

In April last year, Musk said that Tesla may need to get into refining lithium because the cost of the metal has “reached insane levels.” Lithium prices have dropped dramatically since he made these remarks.

However, China still controls more than half of the world’s lithium processing and refining capacity while the US recently controlled only 1%. Musk said the availability of battery-powered lithium was the “primary choke point” for the electric car industry and others.

Governor Abbott, a Republican, has hailed Elon Musk as the greatest businessman on earth.

He said that “Texas wants to be able to be self-reliant and not depend on any hostile foreign country for what we need.”