Towards lithium recovery from desalination brines via an integrated scheme

Lithium salts are significant for numerous commercial and industrial applications. This paper proposes a simulated integrated scheme for salt recovery from seawater. The developed scheme targets the separation of Lithium from brine as an end product. It comprises chemical treatment, membrane separation, thermal separation and ion exchange processes. The selected integrated scheme is designed according to screened and analyzed reported data on separation technologies as well as equilibrium/kinetics of lithium adsorption using selective adsorbents. The developed 20,000 m(3)/d seawater desalination/salt recovery scheme is estimated to produce recovered salts of 113, 186 and 1,670 ton/d of raw calcium, magnesium and sodium, respectively. The separated mixed potassium and lithium chloride salts amounted to about 575 ton/d and 47 kg/d (including 62% lithium chloride), respectively. For lithium adsorption, the required amount of selected manganese oxide adsorbent was estimated to be 0.5 ton/column bed based on the equilibrium exchange capacity of the selected lithium adsorbent. The estimated overall lithium recovery was 72%. These results confirm the promising features of the developed desalination/salt recovery process.