Lithium recovery from wastewater
OwnerYan Wang, Zeyi Yao +1inventors
InventorsYan Wang, Zeyi Yao, Jiahui Hou
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Abstract
Lithium is extracted from natural brine or manufactured sources by adsorbing lithium on a lithium-selective solid medium, acid-washing to form a low-concentration lithium solution, concentrating the solution using a lithium-ion-conducting polymer membrane, and precipitating lithium carbonate from the concentrated lithium solution. The low concentration lithium solution is concentrated by flowing the low concentration lithium solution across a lithium-ion-conducting polymer membrane, and acid washing the lithium-ion-conducting polymer membrane to generate a concentrated lithium solution. Purified lithium is extracted by precipitating lithium from the concentrated lithium solution.
Claims26
A method of generating purified lithium, comprising:
- adsorbing lithium onto a lithium-selective solid medium from an aqueous stream;
- flowing a first acid across the lithium-selective solid medium for extracting a low concentration lithium solution;
- contacting the low concentration lithium solution with a lithium-ion-conducting polymer membrane for extracting the lithium onto the lithium-ion-conducting polymer membrane in a capture step;
- contacting a second acid with the lithium-ion-conducting polymer membrane for extracting a concentrated lithium solution in a release step;
- concentrating the low concentration lithium solution by performing one or more cycles of the capture step and the release step using the lithium-ion-conducting polymer membrane to reach a target lithium concentration;
- and
- recovering lithium from precipitation of the concentrated lithium solution.
A system for harvesting lithium, comprising:
- an adsorption column containing a lithium-selective solid medium configured to adsorb lithium from a brine;
- a first acid source fluidly coupled to the adsorption column and configured to contact the lithium-selective solid medium with a first acid solution to produce a low-concentration lithium solution;
- a membrane module comprising a lithium-ion-conducting polymer membrane fluidly coupled to receive the low-concentration lithium solution, wherein the membrane module is configured to load lithium into the lithium-ion-conducting polymer membrane;
- a second acid source fluidly coupled to the membrane module and configured to contact the lithium-ion-conducting polymer membrane with a second acid solution to produce a concentrated lithium solution;
- and
- a precipitation reactor fluidly coupled to receive the concentrated lithium solution and configured to precipitate lithium carbonate therefrom.
A lithium carbonate compound precipitated from an acid wash of polymer-based membrane with adsorbed lithium resulting from leachate of a brine immersed in a zirconium-titanate ion-sieve sorbent.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.