Toward a Circular Lithium Economy with Electrodialysis: Upcycling Spent Battery Leachates with Selective and Bipolar Ion-Exchange Membranes.

Recycling spent lithium-ion batteries offers a sustainable solution to reduce ecological degradation from mining and mitigate raw material shortages and price volatility. This study investigates using electrodialysis with selective and bipolar ion-exchange membranes to establish a circular economy for lithium-ion batteries. An experimental data set of over 1700 ion concentration measurements across five current densities, two solution compositions, and three pH levels supports the techno-economic analysis.

Modeling Henry's law and phase separations of water-NaCl-organic mixtures with solvation and ion-pairing.

Empirical measurements of solution vapor pressure of ternary acetonitrile (MeCN) HO-NaCl-MeCN mixtures were recorded, with NaCl concentrations ranging from zero to the saturation limit, and MeCN concentrations ranging from zero to an absolute mole fraction of 0.64. After accounting for speciation, the variability of the Henry's law coefficient at vapor-liquid equilibrium (VLE) of MeCN ternary mixtures decreased from 107% to 5.

Sustainable Lithium Recovery from Hypersaline Salt-Lakes by Selective Electrodialysis: Transport and Thermodynamics.

Evaporative technology for lithium mining from salt-lakes exacerbates freshwater scarcity and wetland destruction, and suffers from protracted production cycles. Electrodialysis (ED) offers an environmentally benign alternative for continuous lithium extraction and is amenable to renewable energy usage. Salt-lake brines, however, are hypersaline multicomponent mixtures, and the impact of the complex brine-membrane interactions remains poorly understood.

Lithium Concentration from Salt-Lake Brine by Donnan-Enhanced Nanofiltration.

Membranes offer a scalable and cost-effective approach to ion separations for lithium recovery. In the case of salt-lake brines, however, the high feed salinity and low pH of the post-treated feed have an uncertain impact on nanofiltration's selectivity. Here, we adopt experimental and computational approaches to analyze the effect of pH and feed salinity and elucidate key selectivity mechanisms.

Solute displacement in the aqueous phase of water-NaCl-organic ternary mixtures relevant to solvent-driven water treatment.

Twelve water miscible organic solvents (MOS): acetone, tetrahydrofuran, isopropanol, acetonitrile, dimethyl sulfoxide, 1,4-dioxane, dimethylacetamide, -methyl-2-pyrrolidone, trifluoroethanol, isopropylamine, dimethylformamide, and dimethyl ether (DME) were used to produce ternary mixtures of water-NaCl-MOS relevant to MOS-driven fractional precipitation. The aqueous-phase composition of the ternary mixture at liquid-liquid equilibrium and liquid-solid endpoint was established through quantitative nuclear magnetic resonance and mass balance. The results highlight the importance of considering the hydrated concentrations of salts and suggest that at high salt concentrations and low MOS concentration, the salt concentration is governed by competition between the salt ions and MOS molecules.