2024-08-23 03:15:00
AGI – A new technology can extract lithium from brines at an estimated cost 40 percent less than the most advanced extraction method and at about a quarter of the current market price of lithium. The new technology will also be more reliable and sustainable in its use of water, chemicals and land than today’s technology, according to findings from a study published in the text by researchers at Stanford University. Global demand for lithium has increased in recent years, driven by the rise of electric vehicles and renewable energy storage. The main source of lithium extraction today is based on placing brines in large lakes under the sun for a year or more, leaving behind a lithium-rich solution, after which heavy use of toxic chemicals finishes the job.
“The efficiency and cost benefits of our method make it a promising change to current extraction techniques and a potential game-changer for the lithium supply chain,” said Yi Cui, lead author of the study and professor of engineering and materials science in the School of Engineering. The research team estimates that its approximate costs between $3,500 and $4,400 per ton of high-purity lithium hydroxide, which can be converted to lithium carbonate, compared to prices of $9,100 per ton today.
Cui and his team’s new method uses electricity to transport lithium across a solid-state electrolyte membrane from water with a low concentration of lithium to a more concentrated, high-purity solution. Each of the cells increases the lithium concentration to a solution from which the final chemical separation is relatively easy. This process uses less than 10 percent of the electricity required by current extraction technology of the brine and has a lithium selectivity of almost 100 percent, making it very efficient. “The advantages shown by our method over traditional lithium extraction techniques improve its feasibility in sustainable and cost-effective lithium production,” said the study’s lead author, Rong Xu, a former postdoctoral researcher in Cui’s lab. now a faculty member at Xi Jiaotong University in China.
#technology #lithium #extraction #brines