Abstract
Climate change has important implication for the ecological environment and human social activities. The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is a sensitive area for climate change, and the lakes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are known as the “guardians” of climate change. However, there are few studies on the impact of climate variations on the exploitation of lithium resources in salt lakes. In this work, the collected data from Zabuye Salt Lake Observation Station and the experimental data of brine at different temperatures were employed as the research objects to investigate the relationship between regional climate change and lithium resources in salt lakes. The results indicated that Zabuye Salt Lake had abundant solar energy resources from 1991 to 2020 with the annual average sunshine duration of 3,122.4 h, the average annual evaporation of 2,579.07 mm/yr, and the annual average precipitation of 168.65 mm/yr. The average annual evaporation is around 15.3 times the average annual precipitation, owing to the short rainy season and the low rainfall. The phase diagram displayed that two lithium carbonate precipitation peaks clearly appeared at 25°C, and no obvious precipitation peak appeared at 15°C, indicating that a high-grade lithium carbonate mixed salt was prone to be formed at a higher temperature while lithium ions was more inclined to enrich in brine at a lower temperature. Therefore, Zabuye Salt Lake with the characteristics of low temperature, large temperature difference, less precipitation, strong radiation and large evaporation could be applied as unique lithium resources in the salt gradient solar pond, which would play a positive role in the development of salt lake resources.
Highlights
The global climate has changed significantly over the past 30 years, and such change would continue over a period of time (Fischer et al, 2018; Janos et al, 2018; Bandh et al, 2021; Ye et al, 2021)
Researchers have carried out a lot of research on the impact of climate change on agriculture, coastline erosion rate and ecological environment, and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was pointed out to be more sensitive to global climate change (Liu et al, 2015; Wang et al, 2021)
The phase diagram experiment indicated that a high temperature is conductive to the precipitation of lithium carbonate in the salt lake, while a low temperature is favorable for the enrichment of lithium ions in the salt lake
Summary
The global climate has changed significantly over the past 30 years, and such change would continue over a period of time (Fischer et al, 2018; Janos et al, 2018; Bandh et al, 2021; Ye et al, 2021). Researchers have carried out a lot of research on the impact of climate change on agriculture, coastline erosion rate and ecological environment, and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was pointed out to be more sensitive to global climate change (Liu et al, 2015; Wang et al, 2021). A large number of lakes distributed on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau strongly respond to the evolution of the warm and humid environment in the region, and reflect the regional climate change law under natural conditions, being a climate change-sensitive area (Wan et al, 2005; Zhang et al, 2014; You et al, 2016). The influence of climate change on lithium mining in Zabuye Salt Lake in Tibet was investigated according to the relationship of the climate observation data and the Li+ concentration of the lake in the past 30 years. Combined with the control factors in the production technology of lithium ore, the optimal conditions were analyzed for the production of lithium ore through a series of experiments, providing significant technical support for the production of lithium ore from Zabuye Salt Lake brine
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