Without lithium, the all-electric vehicles of today wouldn’t be feasible, and with an increasing demand for EVs expected to exhaust reserves on land by 2080, this might become inevitable. But there is another way to extract the vital element, or rather another place.
The oceans contain roughly 5,000 times more lithium than land, but at unconscionably small concentrations of roughly 0.2 parts per million (ppm). And a team of researchers has developed a new system capable of extracting concentrated lithium from seawater, according to a recent study published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.
The research team from KAUST developed an electrochemical cell containing a ceramic membrane composed of lithium lanthanum titanium oxide (LLTO), whose crystal structure possesses holes wide enough to allow lithium ions to move through, while also blocking the larger metal ions. “LLTO membranes have never been used to extract and concentrate lithium ions before,” said Zhen Li, a postdoc researcher who developed the cell. The cell is comprised of three compartments: First, seawater flows into the central feed chamber, and then positive lithium ions move through the LLTO membrane, and into an adjacent compartment equipped with a buffer solution, in addition to a copper cathode coated in ruthenium and platinum.
Leave a Reply