Plant at Salar del Carmen
Brine operation · Chile
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Plant at Salar del Carmen is a brine operation in Chile on record for lithium. The source lists a capacity of 48 000 metric tons per year (2014).
48 000metric tons per year
Largest recorded annual capacity: Lithium carbonate (2014). Capacity is not production.
STALE 2014
Type and status
Brine operation
Status as listed: Active (2014)
Largest recorded capacity
48 000metric tons per year
Lithium carbonate, 2014
Water stress of the sub-basin
Arid and Low Water Use
Modelled baseline of the place, 2023
Overview
Map
- Plant at Salar del Carmen: Brine operation
- Chile
The ring marks the coordinates the source gives.
Key facts
- Type
- Brine operation
- Country
- Chile (CHL)
- Location (lat, lon)
- -23.6414, -70.2593
- Coordinates, per the source
- Exact
- Location, as listed
- Plant at Salar del Carmen, near the city of Antofagasta, Antofagasta (Region II)
- Commodities and products, as listed
- Lithium carbonate; Lithium chloride
- Status, as listed
- Active (2014)
- Operator, as listed
- SQM Salar S.A.
- Owner, as listed
- Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile S.A. (SQM), 100%
Supply chain
Where this site sits in the chain: what the record lists, and what else is on record nearby.
Materials on record
- Kind of site
- Brine operation
- Commodities and products, as listed
- Lithium carbonate; Lithium chloride
In Chile
The atlas has 161 sites on record in Chile.
Country profile: ChileCompare with another site
Sites come from a USGS compilation for Latin America and the Caribbean that describes 2014, the national surveys of Australia (plants, mines, critical-mineral deposits), Canada (mines, smelters, refineries, critical-mineral projects) and Sweden (mines in operation and significant prospects), a 2022 database of coal and metal mines, and mine areas mapped by OpenStreetMap volunteers (marked as estimated). A deposit or a project is not a mine and is never counted as one. Processing plants in Asia, Africa and Europe are mostly missing. A missing facility means it is not in these sources, not that it does not exist.
Money
Capacity and yearly production as the sources record them. The atlas has no revenue, cost or value figure for a single site.
Annual capacity
As stated by the source, in the source's own unit. Capacity is not production.
| Product | Capacity | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Lithium carbonate | 48 000metric tons per year | |
| Lithium chloride | Not available |
These figures are informational, not financial advice.
Sustainability
Four indicators, the same on every profile. For a single site most of them are properties of the place or the country, and are labelled so.
Carbon
Emissions intensity of the electricity grid of Chile: the country's grid, not this site's.
291gCO2e/kWh
Higher than 33% of the other 208 countries with a grid figure.
- The atlas has no record of this site's own power supply or emissions.
Water
Baseline water stress of the sub-basin the site lies in.
Arid and Low Water Use
This is a class, not a figure, so no percentile is given.
- A modelled property of the place, not a measure of the site's own water use.
- "Arid and Low Water Use" is a class of its own in the source and is not counted as high.
Land
Land visibly used by mining.
Not available per site: the atlas holds the mapped area per country only.
- Mapped from satellite images for all mining in a country. It cannot be attributed to one material or one site.
Circularity
Recycling's share of demand.
Not available per site: the atlas has no recycling figure for single sites.
There is no overall score: the four figures measure different things and are not added up. How to read these figures
Risks & policy
Export controls in force
Compiled by USGS, effective January 2026. Not a live feed.
USGS Table 4 lists no export control by Chile for the materials of this site.
Chokepoints at sea
The atlas has no record of which minerals pass through which sea passage, so no chokepoint figure is attached to this profile. Current ship counts for the main passages are on the Live page. Open the Live page
What the atlas does not know about sites
Sites come from a USGS compilation for Latin America and the Caribbean that describes 2014, the national surveys of Australia (plants, mines, critical-mineral deposits), Canada (mines, smelters, refineries, critical-mineral projects) and Sweden (mines in operation and significant prospects), a 2022 database of coal and metal mines, and mine areas mapped by OpenStreetMap volunteers (marked as estimated). A deposit or a project is not a mine and is never counted as one. Processing plants in Asia, Africa and Europe are mostly missing. A missing facility means it is not in these sources, not that it does not exist.
Sources
Every source this profile uses, with its licence, the years its figures describe and how sure the figures are. Each chip on the profile opens the single record.
- USGS OFR 2017-1079 (Latin America and the Caribbean) ↗3 records used
- Licence
- Public domain (U.S. Government work)
- As of
- 2014
- Confidence
- Reported · Estimated
- Ember Yearly Electricity Data ↗1 record used
- Licence
- CC-BY-4.0
- As of
- 2025
- Confidence
- Reported
- WRI Aqueduct 4.0 ↗1 record used
- Licence
- CC-BY-4.0
- As of
- 2023
- Confidence
- Estimated
{n} record used
This record comes from
The database took it from: USGS Minerals Yearbook, Volume III (area reports), 2014
History & talk
Revision history and discussion are coming soon.
Every change to a figure will be listed here with its source, its credit and its review, and each profile will have a place to discuss it. Until then the data changes only when a source is updated, and every figure links to that source.
What we don't know yet
No open source we may use gives these figures. Nothing is estimated to fill them. If you know a public source, add it.
- Latest recorded production: No production figure recorded.Add data: Latest recorded production: No production figure recorded.