Geothermal Brine Draws Morton Salt Shell Oil withdraws, but Morton starts building pilot plant In the latest jockeying to gage the power and chemical potential of southern California's vast geothermal brine area (C&EN, Aug. 31, 1964, page 20), Shell Oil has pulled out after taking a long look at the pros pects, and Morton Salt is about to go in. With its partner—O'Neill, Ashmun, and Hilliard of Midland, Tex.— Morton is starting to build a chemical and steam-power pilot plant. Mean time, Pure Oil subsidiary Earth En ergy, Inc., is putting its newly com pleted chemical pilot plant through its shakedown runs. Studies. Shell Oil signed an option to take over the interests of the Mid land, Tex., group near California's Salton Sea late in 1963. In its year long evaluation of the project, the company drilled two wells besides the two already there and made labora tory and economic studies. (Last year, Shell estimated the cost of drill-
STEAM. Tube spews hot brine at geothermal brine well drilled in Cali fornia's Imperial Valley by Shell Oil, which now is withdrawing from project 16
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ing a well at $250,000 to $300,000, not including evaluation of the pros pects.) About its withdrawal, Shell says only that it felt the venture was not the kind the company should un dertake. Like other companies that have studied the rich mineral resource, Mor ton Salt's chief interest is the potas sium chloride content, although the brine contains a variety of other min erals. But a contract with the Impe rial Irrigation District, which owns the land leased by the O'Neill group, calls also for a pilot power project. Ac cording to IID executive officer M. J. Dowd, the Texas group has been given a one-year extension to drill a fifth well, provided two low-pressure turbo-generators are installed and ready to operate at existing wells by July 1. Minerals. The developers must also "diligently investigate" ways to recover potash and other commer cially valuable minerals from the brine and ways to dispose of excess miner als. The chief disposal problems are the large amounts of sodium chloride and calcium chloride. One well last August produced a total maximum flow of 2080 tons per day, including 1120 tons of NaCl, 636 tons of CaCl 2 , and 324 tons of KCl. Current plans of the O'Neill group are to store the waste brines in a pond. To do this, they had to get an exten sion of the permit from the Colorado River Basin Regional Water Pollution Control Board. W. Aubrey Smith, a chemical engineer representing O'Neill, told the board the extra time was necessary to develop the steam power plant and to properly design the operating program, "a time consuming and expensive task." Mr. Smith is a former vice president of Southwest Potash, which had been negotiating with the Texas interests in 1963. The deal never went through, however, and Shell stepped into the picture. Reinjection. Earth Energy's pilot plant, part of its joint venture with Magma Power, started initial opera tions late in December. An impor tant part of the plant is a reinjection well to get rid of waste brines. At last report, both the reinjection system and the pilot plant were operating sat isfactorily. Because this project is on private land, Earth Energy and Magma Power are not tied to concur rent electric power development. However, they may undertake such an effort later.
Auto Makers Under Fire in Smog Battle L.A. County asks U.S. Attorney General to probe ΑΜΑ agreements The Los Angeles County board of supervisors last week fired another salvo in its running battle with auto mobile manufacturers over air pollu tion by motor vehicles. A resolution passed unanimously by the board asks the U.S. Attorney General to investi gate agreements between members of the Automobile Manufacturers Asso ciation for possible violations of anti trust laws and to take action to prevent "further collusive obstruction" to the control of air pollution from vehicles. Agreements. Supervisor Warren M. Dorn, who introduced the resolution, is chairman of the board's committee on air pollution and a long-time critic of the automobile industry. Mr. Dorn charges that the agreements between car makers to pool findings on emis sions research and to cross-license any developments became pacts to assure that no one maker would seize com petitive advantage and, thus, restrain competition. Such united action by the auto mobile makers, Mr. Dorn alleges, ac tually blocked development of smog control devices. Within two months after the Motor Vehicle Pollution Con trol Board certified four exhaust con trol devices developed by others at great expense, he notes, the car manu facturers suddenly announced that their own control systems would be on 1966 models sold in California. They could have done this more than 10 years ago, Mr. Dorn says, and if they had, air pollution by motor vehicles would have been well under control by 1966. "It is unreasonable to anticipate under these circum stances that the developers of devices will continue to improve their devices so as to provide stimulus for the auto industry to meet the more stringent standards required . . . with the in crease in motor vehicle population/' The board of supervisors aims to give its resolution the widest possible circulation. Copies are going not only to the U.S. Department of Justice, but also to the Departments of Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare, to Congressional committees, governors of all the states, and governmental bodies all over the State of California.
