Deposit
Great Salt Lake
Great Salt Lake is a deposit with published resource estimates in Utah, recorded in the USGS lithium deposits in the United States selected-sites dataset (2020 release).
Location: Utah, United States
Commodities: lithium; magnesium; salt; chlorine; sulfate of potash
Deposit model: lithium brine · unclassified
Published resource estimates
| Material | Class | Amount | Grade | Contained | As of | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| lithium (Li) | Unclassified | — | 64 parts per million | — | Jan 1, 1976 | Whelan and Petersen (1976), Page 75 — Whelan, J.A., and Petersen, C.A., 1976, Lithium Resources of Utah, chap. 20 of Vine, J.D., ed., Lithium Resources and Requirement by the Year 2000: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1005, p. 75-78. [Also available at https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1005/report.pdf] |
| lithium (Li) | Unclassified | — | 33.111 parts per million | — | Jan 1, 1976 | Whelan and Petersen (1976), Page 75 — Whelan, J.A., and Petersen, C.A., 1976, Lithium Resources of Utah, chap. 20 of Vine, J.D., ed., Lithium Resources and Requirement by the Year 2000: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1005, p. 75-78. [Also available at https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1005/report.pdf] |
Exploration and site history
- Resources: "The total metric tonnage of lithium in Great Salt Lake is 526,000, of which perhaps half is recoverable. Extraction of lithium from Great Salt Lake will be as a byproduct of magnesium-metal or salt recovery. Because lithium follows magnesium during processing of the brines, and because of the low lithium content of the brines, economic recovery of lithium from Great Salt Lake depends on a viable magnesium industry." (Whelan and Petersen (1976))
Sources
- U.S. Geological Survey · published Jun 1, 2020 · retrieved Aug 18, 2026 · archive