Selective recovery of lithium from Dead Sea end brines using UBK10 ion exchange resin

Abstract

The Dead Sea, a live pool of minerals and elements, holds ~9% of the world's known lithium reserves. However, the low lithium concentrations (30-40 mg/L) in the end brine and the high divalent to lithium ratio (Mg +2 + Ca +2 to Li + ) were obstacles that must be overcome to extract the lithium. In our previous work, lithium concentrations in the Dead Sea end brine were enriched by chemical precipitation up to 1700 mg/kg in the produced solid precipitate. The obtained precipitate was decomposed by doubledistilled water, and about 66% of lithium was leached, producing an environmental liquor containing an elevated concentration of lithium. A sequential ion exchange technique was used to achieve selective lithium recovery in this study. The ability of the UBK 10 strong acid-type cation exchange resin (Na type) to remove lithium from simulated and environmental lithiumbearing solutions was investigated. Because of the complex matrix comprising components that may compete with lithium adsorption, a greater quantity of adsorbent was required to achieve the equilibrium state for the environmental solution (7 g) compared to (3.6 g) for the simulated solution.For both lithium-bearing solutions, the kinetics investigation revealed a pseudo-second-order tendency. The interfering capacity was determined to be 0.405, confirming the UBK 10 challenge to selective lithium adsorption.The divalent to lithium ratio was decreased by more than 50 times, yielding encouraging findings for extracting lithium from the low lithium-high divalent to lithium sophisticated Dead Sea end brines.

Microenvironment-Modulating Adsorption Enables Highly Efficient Lithium Extraction under Natural pH Conditions

“…The exploitation of liquid lithium resources is expected to greatly alleviate the contradiction between the supply and demand of lithium resources. At present, many measures have been vigorously studied for the extraction of liquid lithium resources, mainly including adsorption, − electrical method, − membrane technology, − and so on. − However, most liquid lithium sources in the world belong to low-quality lithium sources, which generally possess low concentrations and a large number of impurity ions (especially Mg 2+ ), so a highly selective extraction method is very important for the lithium extraction process. With such a need, adsorption with excellent lithium ion selective performance has attracted the most extensive attention and is almost a mandatory unit during the whole extraction process.…”

Tri(ethylene glycol) modified HYC‐100 resin for lithium ion recovery from aqueous solution

“…[7][8][9] However, these adsorbents precursor are made through solid-phase reactions with calcining temperature as high as 800 C. Their adsorption capacities are not satisfactory with the capacity less than 7 mg/L. 10 Polymeric resin have been well-developed for wide application for water purification, metal ion adsorption and medical waste treatment, and so forth. [11][12][13][14][15][16][17] Although the crown ethers have been recognized as excellent binding units for alkali metal ion, its toxicity and high costs prevent direct modification on the polymeric resin to enhance the adsorption performance.…”

“…However, these adsorbents precursor are made through solid‐phase reactions with calcining temperature as high as 800°C. Their adsorption capacities are not satisfactory with the capacity less than 7 mg/L 10 . Polymeric resin have been well‐developed for wide application for water purification, metal ion adsorption and medical waste treatment, and so forth 11–17 .…”

Surfactant-Capped Silver-Doped Calcium Oxide Nanocomposite: Efficient Sorbents for Rapid Lithium Uptake and Recovery from Aqueous Media

“…To recover or extract lithium from different aqueous sources, several conventional technologies have been used, such as chemical precipitation [12], solvent extraction [13], ion exchange [14], nanofiltration [15], membrane technology [16], adsorption [17][18][19], reaction-coupled separation [20], etc. Among these investigated technologies for Li + recovery, adsorption seems to be a very ideal method from an economic viewpoint and in terms of environmental friendliness [21,22].…”