A Direct Lithium Extraction Process using Hydrated Titanium Oxide

摘要

Novel ion sieve materials display very promising properties for the direct extraction of lithium frombrine. Such direct extraction technology has significant potential to both increase the productivity ofconventional brine resources and also transform poor brine resources into commercially viablelithium reserves. While the fundamental adsorption properties of the ion sieve materials are wellcharacterised, almost no detail on their performance in lithium recovery processes has been reported.In this work a direct lithium extraction process was conceived using the ion sieve material hydratedtitanium oxide (HTO). The adsorption properties of the HTO were determined experimentally andthis data was used to model the process under various operating conditions. The performance of theHTO process was then benchmarked against a conventional adsorption technology using hydratedaluminium oxide (HAO). To achieve 95 % recovery from brine containing 400 mg/L Li it was foundthat the HTO process required a similar amount of adsorbent to the HAO process, but was likely tohave higher equipment size requirements.