A research team from London has developed a discerning membrane that can filter out valuable lithium from salt water and brine.
It's a breakthrough being touted as an alternative to other polluting processes to gather the metal, which is key to the battery sector.
Imperial College London scientists consider salt lakes to be an untapped and diluted lithium well, but a process to recover the element from the water has yet to be scaled. A membrane with tiny pores invented at the college may provide the answer, according to the institution.
"This technology has tremendous potential in a variety of commercially important areas, from energy storage to water purification to recovery of critical materials in a circular economy," Professor Sandro Macchietto said.
The secret to the Imperial innovation is that the polymer membrane is highly selective, with hourglass-shaped pores that allow only lithium to be filtered, not unneeded magnesium and other materials. The lithium is pulled through the membrane with an electric current.
A 2022 Euronews report detailed the environmental impact of lithium mining and processing in South America, showing vast, colorful lithium fields that can degrade soil and cause water shortages. It noted that nearly 600,000 gallons of water are needed to make a ton of lithium.
In response, experts are trying to gather the crucial metal elsewhere. A Princeton team is working on a method to evaporate salt water on strings, isolating lithium. Meanwhile, another group in China is developing a lithium collection membrane.
It's all part of the effort to secure sustainable supplies of the deposit, which sometimes gets caught in foreign supply chains.
Sustainability by Numbers reported that by 2040, we will need tens of millions of tons of certain metals and minerals to power the shift to cleaner energy. While that's a big number, it falls far short of the 15 billion tons of planet-warming dirty fuels pulled from the Earth annually.
A smoother clean-energy transition with more easily harvested lithium can help to reduce and even eliminate harmful air pollution, which the World Health Organization said is a health risk to nearly everyone. Battery recycling is another industry growing to meet the demand.
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Absolutely 👍 The Imperial membrane was not only effective during testing, it is also scalable, with the ability to be incorporated into other "commercial membrane modules," according to the researchers.
"The polymer synthesis routes are based on commercially available monomers and simple chemical modifications, which makes scaling up the membranes relatively easy," doctoral student Dingchang Yang said.
The team is working to establish a company to commercialize the tech, which can also be applied to filtering water and pulling copper and other metal ions from the right water sources.
But lithium seems to be a paramount concern.
"We are … keen to build partnerships with companies to extract lithium at a large scale using real brine solutions," research team lead Qilei Song said.
Importantly, current battery performance already makes it a great time to get your first EV. Goldman Sachs expects battery pack prices to drop by half next year.
Tax breaks of up to $7,500 are still available stateside for qualified electric vehicles, too. That means you can prevent loads of air pollution by parking a gas guzzler while saving up to $1,500 a year on fuel and maintenance expenses.
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