In work for DOE’s Critical Materials Institute, scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) are working to refine a sorbent that can more effectively recover lithium salts from concentrated brines at geothermal plants. These plants pump hot water from geothermal deposits and use it to generate electricity. Concentrated brines left over from the operation are then pumped back into the ground.
ORNL and its research partners are working to improve the capacity and selectivity of a sorbent that could extract the lithium from these brines. The lithium-aluminum-layered double hydroxide chloride (LDH) sorbent they’re developing is a low-cost, reusable option for large-scale industrial plants.
The LDH sorbent is made up of layers of the materials, separated by water molecules and hydroxide ions that create space, allowing lithium chloride to enter more readily than other ions such as sodium and potassium. After the sorbent loads with lithium chloride, it is selectively washed to remove unwanted ions, and then to unload the remaining lithium chloride. In a bench-scale demonstration, the LDH sorbent recovered more than 91% of lithium from a simulated brine.
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Neutron Spectroscopic and Thermochemical Characterization of Lithium–Aluminum-Layered Double Hydroxide Chloride: Implications for Lithium Recovery, By Lili Wu et al. J. Phys. Chem. C 2019, 123, 34, 20723-20729
Publication Date: August 2, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcc.9b04340
Neutron Spectroscopic and Thermochemical Characterization of Lithium–Aluminum-Layered Double Hydroxide Chloride: Implications for Lithium Recovery, By Lili Wu et al. J. Phys. Chem. C 2019, 123, 34, 20723-20729
Publication Date: August 2, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcc.9b04340
