Highly efficient and selective extraction of Li+ from high sodium lithium containing wastewater using manganese series adsorbent

Abstract

Lithium is an indispensable key material in the energy field and is now the treasure of the times. With the rapid expansion of the lithium battery sector, lithium resources are in a supply dilemma, not replenishing demand. The resource recovery process of retired lithium batteries usually produces lithium-containing solutions, and there are usually monovalent cations such as Na+ with the same valence state as Li+, resulting in no better method to extract Li+ from such solutions. Therefore, efficient and selective lithium recovery is particularly important. To this end, HMn2O4 (HMO) adsorbents were synthesized to recover lithium from high sodium lithium-containing wastewater. The adsorption capacity of HMO for Li+ can reach 26 mg/g. After several cycles of experiments, the adsorption capacity of the synthesized HMO for Li+ held stable at about 20 mg/g. It is also used to recover lithium from high sodium lithium-containing wastewater and compared with commercial adsorbent materials. The separation coefficient was found to be as high as 371.18 (The highest separation factor of commercial adsorbent materials is only 46.62), with good adsorption selectivity and stability. It provides a synthetically convenient idea for the Li+/Na+ separation problem in water, and the good selectivity and excellent cyclic regeneration properties of manganese-based adsorbent materials provide some theoretical support for commercial applications.