EVs & energy storage, lithium is key to a clean energy future. Producing the silvery-white metal comes at a significant environmental cost
Meiqi Yang, graduate student in civil and environmental engineering and one of the study’s lead authors, works on a string-based technology that extracts lithium salts from a brine solution.
“We aimed to leverage the fundamental processes of evaporation and capillary action to concentrate, separate and harvest lithium,” said, professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton and the leader of the research team. “We do not need to apply additional chemicals, as is the case with many other extraction technologies, and the process saves a lot of water compared to traditional evaporation approaches.
Compact, low-cost, rapid operations could expand access to include new sources of lithium, such as disused oil and gas wells and geothermal brines, that are currently too small or too dilute for lithium extraction. The researchers said the accelerated evaporation rate could also allow for operation in more humid climates. They are even investigating whether the technology would allow for lithium extraction from seawater.
Ren’s team is already developing a second generation of the technique that will enable greater efficiency, higher throughput, and more control over the crystallization process. He credits the Princeton Catalysis Initiative for providing critical initial support to enable creative research collaborations.
For example, working with Liangbing Hu, the Herbert Rabin Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, inspired the researchers to use and treat the fiber material to maximize the technology’s efficiency.
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