Brine mining

[2] Around 500 BC, the ancient Chinese dug hundreds of brine wells, some of which were over 100 meters (330 feet) in depth.

[5] Iron wedges were hung from a bamboo cable tool attached to a lever on a platform constructed atop the tower.

This is true of a number of shallow brines in the western United States, such as at Searles Lake, California.

Most deep groundwaters classified as brines (having total dissolved solids equal to or greater than that of seawater) are predominantly sodium chloride type.

As the sediments compact under burial pressure, the dissolved species are less mobile than the water, resulting in higher TDS concentrations than seawater.

The ratio of potassium to sodium (K/Na) may increase or decrease with depth, thought to be the result of ion exchange with the sediments.

For instance, the shallow brine beneath Searles Lake, California, is or has been a source of borax, potash, bromine, lithium, phosphate, soda ash, and sodium sulfate.

Salt (sodium chloride) has been a valuable commodity since prehistoric times, and its extraction from seawater also goes back to prehistory.

Soda ash (sodium carbonate) is recovered from shallow subsurface brines at Searles Lake, California.

Soda ash was formerly extracted at El Caracol, Ecatepec, in Mexico City, from the remnant of Lake Texcoco.

Brines brought to the surface by geothermal energy production often contain concentrations of dissolved silica of about 500 parts per million.

The largest operations are in the shallow brine beneath the Salar de Atacama dry lakebed in Chile, which as of 2015 yielded about a third of the world's supply.

Commercial deposits of shallow lithium brines beneath dry lakebeds have the following characteristics in common:[21] In 2010 Simbol Materials received a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for a pilot project aimed at showing the financial feasibility of extracting high-quality lithium from geothermal brine.

The company has acquired development rights to over approximately 1.7 million acres of brine-bearing formations in Canada and Utah.

The brine beneath the Salar de Olaroz, Argentina, is a commercial source of boron, lithium, and potassium.

Iodine is recovered from deep brines pumped to the surface as a byproduct of oil and natural gas production.

[29] By far the largest source of iodine from brine is Japan, where iodine-rich water is co-produced with natural gas.

[30] Japanese iodine brines are produced from mostly marine sediments ranging in age from Pliocene to Pleistocene.

[31] Since 1977, iodine has been extracted from brine in the Morrow Sandstone of Pennsylvanian age, at locations in the Anadarko Basin.

The majority is recovered from Dead Sea brine at plants in Israel and Jordan, where bromine is a byproduct of potash recovery.

The Dow Chemical Company began producing magnesium on a small scale in 1916, from deep subsurface brine in the Michigan Basin.

Dow had located their facility on the Texas coast to take advantage of cheap natural gas for electrical generation.

Starting in 2002, CalEnergy extracted zinc from brines at its geothermal energy plants at the Salton Sea, California.

[6][35] Some near-surface brines in the western United States contain anomalously high concentrations of dissolved tungsten.

A number of people claimed to be able to economically recover gold from seawater, but they were all either mistaken or acted in an intentional deception.

After analysis of 4,000 water samples yielding an average of 0.004 ppb, it became clear to Haber that the extraction would not be possible, and he stopped the project.