From Joe Tegtmeyer.
A beautiful day to fly over the Lithium plant, with decent winds, abundant sunshine and great lighting conditions! I start with a high altitude fly over to help the viewer see the entire site at once and to help out into context where all the detailed sections of the plant we will see later in the video at a lower altitude. The best news is the marked progress in the past 50 or so days since my last visit!
Timestamps:
Introduction & overview with discussion & illustrations: 0:06 to 4:02
Lithium Plant Drone Flight & Narration: 4:19 to 18:05
Early in January, Tesla announced the first shipment of Spodumene Concentrate-6 (SC-6) had arrived to allow initial testing of the rotating kiln, and now the midde hydrometallurgical section is nearing a point where they could begin initial testing soo. Overall, I still think things are looking on track for initial production of Lithium Hydroxide to begin by the summer.
While this first half of the plant comes on-line, I will be looking to see if they begin construction of the second half, or if they will delay this into 2026. In my opinion, Tesla is going to concentrate on just the first half and refine their processing and product while also looking to see what the macro environment for Lithium production looks like before starting on expansion construction, but we shall see soon enough!
The pond on the north end we saw being excavated and greatly expanded on my previous video has now been completed and we see a large berm around the perimeter, and it has been lined to be waterproof. I believe this is a water reservoir for the plant and operations (not a brine tank) as there are still no water utilities supporting the plant.
There is also a new small electrical substation next to the large raw materials warehouse, and this is connected to the larger substation a few miles to the north. This is a critical element to plant operation and is another great sign that the plant itself is getting close to being able to be operated and begin production of LiOH.
I did not see the rail spur under construction yet, and this will be needed at some point before processing can begin to bring in the raw Spodumene Concentrate from the port of Corpus Christi. This will run along the south of the main plant construction site but so far, I do not see evidence of this construction yet.
More interesting discoveries and discussion in the main video! Thank you for watching and I hope this has been informative, educational, and entertaining for you. If you would like, please consider supporting me via Patreon (link is in the description of this video and in the video itself) so I can continue to make and share these incredible videos.
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Video, photos, illustrations, and commentary on this video is by me, Joe Tegtmeyer unless otherwise annotated.
Music in this video is obtained from the YouTube free and unrestricted and royalty-free use library.
Drones used are DJI Mini 2, Mavic Air 2 & Air 3.
