{"id":131934,"date":"2026-01-21T14:01:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T14:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/131934\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T14:01:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T14:01:08","slug":"tesla-lithium-refinery-in-texas-is-now-fully-operational","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/131934\/","title":{"rendered":"Tesla lithium refinery in Texas is now fully operational"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ROBSTOWN, Texas \u2014\u00a0Telsa\u2019s lithium refinery, located in Robstown, Texas, near Corpus Christi, is now fully operational, according to an <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/elonmusk\/status\/2011561514302652607?s=20\" rel=\"nofollow\">X post<\/a> from Elon Musk.<\/p>\n<p>The refinery, which broke ground in 2023 according to a Telsa <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tesla.com\/blog\/tesla-lithium-refinery-groundbreaking\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">press release<\/a>, is the \u201cfirst industrial deployment of an acid-free lithium refining route.\u201d The process seeks to eliminate the hazardous materials from the usual mining of lithium.<\/p>\n<p>The process, which involves taking the material spodumene and converting it to lithium, is talked about by the site manager of the facility, Jason Bevan, in the video on X.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe sustainably source spodumene and bring it to site, where we then run it through a series of conveyance systems, take it through a kiln and cooler,\u201d Bevan said. \u201cFrom there, we take it through an alkaline leach and additional purification steps. Take it into crystallization and produce battery-grade lithium hydroxide.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to the press release, Tesla expects to bring 250 full-time jobs to the area, along with internships through Texas A&amp;M Corpus Christi and apprenticeship opportunities through Del Mar Community College.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROBSTOWN, Texas \u2014\u00a0Telsa\u2019s lithium refinery, located in Robstown, Texas, near Corpus Christi, is now fully operational, according to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[910,155,157,156,223,36427,8075,3621,27],"class_list":{"0":"post-131934","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-corpus-christi","10":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","11":"tag-corpus-christi-news","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-rhett-brady","14":"tag-rotx-what-you-need-to-know","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-texas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}