Refinement of brine for lithium extraction using ion concentration polarization

The surge of electric vehicle deployment in response to the global climate crisis has marked tremendous increase demand lithium-ion batteries. Lithium brine gained much attention as a critical primary lithium resource over mineral sources due cheaper processing and greater abundance. However, reducing Mg2+:Li+ ratio brines remains challenge, magnesium contaminates precipitates. Solar evaporation ponds are traditionally employed concentrate Li reduce Mg content tackle this issue, but typically require 1–2 years process batch feed solution, land area disturbing local environment near resources. Here we present continuous, scalable ion separation technique for an alternative solar evaporation. device utilizes concentration polarization induce locally amplified field. field separates ions into streams according electrophoretic mobility. We demonstrate reduction 25:1 lab below 10:1 Mg2+:Li+, which is acceptable production purity by industrial standards. Reduction 60:1 ? 100:1 approximately 20:1 also demonstrated. system suffers high specific energy consumption (8.804 kWh/g Li+ 9:1) low recovery (9.9%) microfluidic size. economic scaling analysis shows that work within order magnitude state-of-the-art technologies literature after various parameters normalized. Ultimately, demonstrates potential novel continuous extraction from brines, generalizable tool utilizing differences