A.H.M. Golam Hyder, B. Nuraeni, S. Gallagher, J. Macholz, A. Lipson
Argonne National Laboratory,
United States
Keywords: lithium, electrodialysis, conversion, separation
Summary:
Creating LiOH from LiCl currently requires the use of Na2CO3 and Ca(OH)2 to perform the chemical conversion. Replacing this process with bipolar membrane electrodialysis (BPED) will eliminate waste and processing steps. BPED utilizes bipolar membranes to split water into H+ and OH- that then combine with the anion and cations of the feed salt to make an acid and base product. This process can additionally be used to recover lithium from wastewater that is created during the Li-ion battery recycling. This presentation will discuss work on both processes; lithium from brine sources and processing wastewater from the Li-ion battery recycling process. Using a brine source we have demonstrated effective conversion of LiCl to LiOH and HCl. We then scaled that process up to a 1 kg/hr LiOH‧H2O pilot production plant demonstrating highly efficient conversion. With a recycled feedstock from Argonne’s direct recycling process, where the anode is delaminated in water, a combination of techniques were utilized to recover the Li. As the concentration of Li in the feedstock is lower than that which is ideal for the BPED process, we first concentrated the feedstock with standard electrodialysis. This process concentrates the mostly Li2CO3 feedstock by about a factor of two, before conversion to LiOH in a BPED process. The BPED process then produces LiOH and CO2 from the Li2CO3. Technoeconomic analysis indicates that this process could produce LiOH‧H2O at a cost below the average price of LiOH‧H2O between 2020 and 2023.