Power solutions–Made in Utah

The Utah San Rafael Energy Lab (USREL) is hosting multiple advanced nuclear technologies for final validation testing, including the Natura small modular reactor (SMR) which is particularly well positioned for pumping and desalination due to its high operating temperature: The top-end heat drives the pumps and the residual heat drives the thermal desalination. There is no electrical conversion loss in the energy transduction, nuclear heat==>motive power.

Licensing of a prototype system is an inherently slow processes, made slower by the built-in system bias toward uranium fueled power systems. This bias results from the historically massive infusions of cash into processes capable of producing weapons grade nuclear materials in preference to Th-fueled technology that could only be used for power.

What is needed for the Great Salt River Initiative is for licensing and prototype production to be accelerated so that we can move swiftly into the production phase. We need SMR power plants to pump and desalinate deep saline wells until the Great Salt River is ready to repurpose those mobile systems, and we need dedicated POU high power reactors for the main stations.

Safe, clean mineral harvesting solutions– Made in Utah

University of Utah Chemical Engineering Assistant Professor Tao Gao specializes in research focused on electrochemical energy storage technologies, which include Li-ion batteries, flow batteries, CO2 reduction and etc. His lab tackles the challenges in energy storage technologies with a multi-scale approach, not only designing new materials for better performance, they also study the mass transport and reaction inside batteries, combining machine learning methods with physical modeling to optimize the usage of batteries.

Prof. Gao's tailored research of battery materials uses intercalation chemistry to selectively bind specific molecules or atoms, then release these species when called for. This technology is fundamentally superior to the Mg harvesting approaches that have historically raped the Great Salt Lake for sixty years (USMag Superfund). The U of U approach will extract valuable Li and Mg effectively from brines as well as soluble materials from sludge. It is best technology for inline harvesting of Li, Mg, I from concentrated seawater brines before the salt (Na, Cl, K, Ca, P) containing remainder is used to create west desert evaporation ponds.

The Great Salt River Initiative needs philanthropic investors to help ensure Utahns solve these problems for Utah and project ongoing revenues from valuable mineral harvesting onto helping Utah clean up the mess.

The sludge monster– conceived in Utah

The EPA Superfund toxic waste site at the USMag site on the western shore of GSL represents a hazard waiting to tarnish all efforts to refill the lake, by spreading its contamination into surface and sub-surface waters. 'Nobody' knows what to do.

You don't bring a Walther PPK to the scene when a bunker needs to be busted. You don't bring a kitchen extinguisher to a raging forest fire. You don't clean a diaper blowout with a Kleenex. The Superfund site needs solids cleaned up by a Sludge Monster, capable of chewing up 100 tons/day contaminated dirt, destroying the carcinogenic PCB's and HCB's and spitting out something as inert as glass... while also harvesting residual value from entrained Li and Mg. This is what we know how to do in Utah, because we care and because we live here, and because we think about these things all the time.

The Great Salt River Initiative needs visionary philanthropic investors to facilitate these solutions.

C/C Pipes– MIU from Utah Coal (C-ore)

Dr. Craig Eataugh has been studying coal for many years from the perspective that it is too valuable as a precursor for hi-tech materials to be burning it. Utah's coal (or coal fines from mine cleanup operations) is the building block for pipes that can stand up to seawater for the decades necessary for our great-great-grandkids to benefit from the water abundance economy.

Dr. Eataugh's company, Utah based Combustion Resources, LLC demonstrated that his coal pitch qualified for use in rocket nozzle fabrication, densifying shapes woven from carbon fibers and infiltrated with his resin pitch and then converted to graphite. This material, carbon-carbon (C/C or carbon-fiber-in-graphite-matrix) is an extremely strong and lightweight material, not easily abraded and not chemically reactive (so it doesn't corrode).

The pitch is combined with coal-derived carbon fibers in processing techniques appropriate for pipe manufacturing and rapidly densified (Utah IP, pending filing). Pipes can be manufactured in a continuous fashion (negligible thermal expansion minimizes need for expansion joints) on-site with coal-derived pitch and fibrous carbon products without the tight engineering constraints needed in the aerospace industry. In other words: wrap it thicker if you need to.

The Great Salt River Initiative needs philanthropic investors to kick-start pipe manufacturing in Utah by investing in the IP development, and assimilating the necessary additive manufacturing expertise.

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