Natural Lithium resources mainly stored in mines in both solid and liquid form . Liquid lithium mine mainly refers to salt lake brine. At present, about 90% of the known lithium resources in the world are stored in salt lake brine. With the rapid development of the global renewable energy industry, the demand for lithium continues to grow substantially. Compared with lithium extraction from ores, lithium extraction from salt lakes has obvious cost and resource advantages, especially the cost is only 50% of that from solid ores. The development of lithium extraction technology from salt lake will drive the transformation of lithium resource supply in the world and provide development opportunity .
China’s total lithium resources account for about 6% of the world, among which lithium resources in salt lake brine account for more than 79% of the total lithium resources in China, accounting for about 1/3 of the world’s lithium resources in salt lake brine. Lithium extraction technology from salt lake has been developed from solar pond to calcination, electrodialysis, adsorption, nanofiltration, solvent extraction method and so on. No matter which lithium extraction technology is adopted, brine refining is the key link of lithium extraction technology from salt lake.
PolyCera Membrane is among the key technology of extracting lithium from salt lake in renewable energy industry because of its advantages of fouling resistance, high suspended solids resistance, acid and alkali resistance. At present, a 2000m³/h project using PolyCera Membrane to extract lithium from salt lake brine is under construction.
The PolyCera Membrane has remarkable performance advantages in a salt lake lithium extraction project:
- Less system investment, small footprint, low energy consumption, and remarkable economic benefit;
- The viscosity of brine is high, and the mobility further decreases as the ambient temperature decreases in winter. The PolyCera Membrane is hydrophilic and has high water permeability and high pressure resistance. When filtering salt lake brine with high viscosity and low mobility, the operating pressure of PolyCera Membrane is lower than that of a conventional membrane product, so that the operating cost is reduced;
- The PolyCera Membrane element is in spiral wound form, without fiber breakage risk. This ensures the stable filtrate quality.
- PolyCera Membrane has corrugated flow channel with strong solids handling capacity. It is easy to clean, and exhibits strong anti-fouling performance;
- PolyCera Membrane has nanometer scale surface pores (20 nm, 0.02 μm), which provide high filtration efficiency;
- PolyCera Membrane has a dense skin layer. Backwash can recover performance easily. There is no risk of internal fouling;
- The cross-flow operation is used in the PolyCera Membrane system. No salting out phenomenon occurs on the membrane surface, and the flux is stable filtering high salinity brine.
In conclusion, PolyCera Membrane can be used in the brine refining process to provide qualified brine for the subsequent process of the lithium extraction from the salt lake.
With the formulation and implementation of the global carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, the rapid growth of the renewable energy industry has greatly increased the market demand for lithium materials. With its own performance advantages, PolyCera Membrane helps lithium extraction from salt lake brine to improve the efficiency of the production process and contributes to the development of the renewable energy industry.
With the formulation and implementation of the global carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, the rapid growth of renewable energy industry has greatly increased the market demand for lithium materials. With its own performance advantages, PolyCera Membrane helps lithium extraction from salt lake brine to improve the efficiency of production process and contributes to the development of renewable energy industry.
