Scientists develop ‘cheap and easy’ method to extract lithium from seawater

[caption id="attachment_1003748473" align="alignnone" width="604"] Millennial Lithium’s Pastos Grande lithium brine project in Argentina’s Salta province. Credit: Millennial Lithium.[/caption]

Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, a private research university in Saudi Arabia, have developed what they believe is an economically viable system to extract high-purity lithium from seawater.

Previous efforts to tease lithium from the mixture the metal makes together with sodium, magnesium and potassium in seawater yielded very little. Although the liquid contains 5,000 times more lithium than what can be found on land, it is present at extremely low concentrations of about 0.2 parts per million (ppm).

To address this issue, the team led by Zhiping Lai tried a method that had never been used before to extract lithium ions. They employed an electrochemical cell containing a ceramic membrane made from lithium lanthanum titanium oxide (LLTO).