Lithium carbonate production process and apparatus
AssigneeU.S. Borax Inc.
InventorsAmit Patwardhan, Sandip Shinde, Allen Wattenbarger
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Abstract
A method of forming lithium carbonate from a lithium-bearing solution including: evaporating the lithium-bearing solution to precipitate a first group of impurities; removing the first group of impurities to form a first purified solution; and performing a flash crystallisation step within a predetermined temperature range to crystallise a second group of impurities from the first purified solution; removing the second group of impurities from the first solution to form a second purified solution, wherein at least 90 wt % of lithium is recovered from the first purified solution; and reacting the second purified solution with a metal carbonate to form lithium carbonate of at least 90 wt % purity.
Claims13
A method of forming lithium carbonate from a lithium bearing solution including:
- removing a first group of impurities comprising calcium and sodium-containing salts from the lithium-bearing solution to form a first purified solution;
- performing a crystallisation step by flash crystallization within a temperature range from 13° C. to 20° C. to crystallise a second group of impurities comprising sodium, potassium and boron-containing impurities from the first purified solution;
- removing the second group of impurities from the first purified solution to form a second purified solution, wherein at least 95 wt % of lithium is recovered from the first purified solution;
- reacting the second purified solution with a metal carbonate to form lithium carbonate of at least 95 wt % purity.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.