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with inorganic molecular sieve ion-exchange sorbents is the most developed technology and is widely believed to offer the most likely pathway for the development of economic lithium extraction and recovery from Salton Sea brines. However, other technologies that are still in early development may one day offer a second generation of technologies for direct, selective lithium extraction. 3.1 Precipitation It is possible to use simple and well understood chemical precipitation reactions to recover lithium from brine. Some of the precipitation processes used for lithium recovery from seawater and brines include alkaline pH adjustment and addition of sodium carbonate, sodium oxalate, or other precipitation agents (Meshram et al., 2014). Lithium can be recovered by lime precipitation, but aluminum salts are reported to show the best performance for lithium recovery from geothermal water (Meshram et al., 2014; Schultze and Bauer, 1984). The US Bureau of Mines developed technology for the precipitation and recovery of lithium from geothermal brines (Schultze and Bauer, 1984), but it is not apparent the process was ever applied for commercial purposes. The process involved precipitation with aluminum chloride (AlCl3) and lime at pH 7.5 and leaching the resulting filter-cake with hydrochloric acid and tetrahydrofuran (Schultze and Bauer, 1984). The process recovered 89% of the available lithium and produced a 99.9% pure lithium chloride (Schultze and Bauer, 1984). Meshrametal.(2014)reportedthattheappropriatepHforlithiumrecoveryis10 13anduseofNaAlO2producedbetterrecoveriesthan AlCl3. With a high purity NaAlO2 solution as precipitating agent, about 98 99% Li recovery was achieved at pH 11.5 from a silica (SiO2) and calcium-free geothermal water (Meshram et al., 2014). Precipitation reactions are routinely used in geothermal power production, especially for the control of silica (von Hirtz, 2016), but precipitation reactions may not be practical for direct extraction of lithium from geothermal brines. The non-selective nature of these types of reactions and the numerous competitive co-precipitates (such as calcium carbonates, iron hydroxides, etc.) will influence chemical reagent costs and may cause waste disposal problems. In addition, lithium extracted by precipitation will require extensive post-extraction purification and processing to meet standards for lithium battery production or other uses. 3.2 Organic Sorbents 3.2.1 Organic ion-exchange resins Using strong acid cation-exchange resins to selectively collect and recover lithium from seawater and other lithium-containing solutions has been investigated since at least the 1970s (Dupont, 2019, 2020; Lee and Bauman, 1979; Li et al., 2018; Meshram et al., 2014). However, early studies showed that organic ion-exchange resins exhibited low selectivity for lithium ions (Dupont, 2020; Meshram et al., 2014). Ion-exchange resins only become effective for selective lithium extraction when impregnated with inorganic, lithium-selective sorbents (Burba, 1984; Lee and Bauman, 1980a, 1982; Lee and Bauman, 1979; Lee and Bauman, 1978). 3.2.2 Ion-imprinted polymers and other organic sorbents Several researchers have investigated the synthesis and application of organic polymers that selectively extract lithium in preference to other metal ions. Metal selectivity may be imparted by including reactive or chelation sites in steric structures specifically sized using an ion-imprinting process to allow lithium, and not competing ions, to enter. For example, Ventura and others created a nanocomposite sorbent comprised of lithium-ion sieve nanoparticles and lithium-imprinted polymeric resins for the selective recovery of lithium from geothermal brines (Ventura et al., 2018; Ventura et al., 2016). Lu et al. (2018) developed lithium-imprinted polymers that contained crown ether structures that selectively adsorbed lithium over sodium and potassium. Crown ether moieties are also used in other ion-imprinted polymers designed for lithium adsorption (Zhang et al., 2017). Ueda (2015) used cyclic siloxane to remove and concentrate lithium ions as cyclic siloxane-lithium complexes. The cyclic siloxane-lithium complexes are extracted using liquid-liquid extraction and then recovered from the organic phase by filtering (Ueda, 2015). The use of synthesized organic polymers to selectively extract lithium seems a very promising approach. As discussed below, smaller crown ether structures have been shown to selectively bind lithium, even in complex solutions. Cyclic siloxanes appear to function in a similar manner to crown ethers, but to our knowledge have not been investigated to any significant extent in the context of geothermal lithium recovery. Lithium-imprinted polymers are in development by startup companies, but are still at a very low technology readiness level. 3.3 Inorganic Sorbents Inorganic crystalline solids, including various aluminum hydroxides (AlOH), aluminum oxides (AlOx), manganese oxides (MnOx), and titanium oxides (TiOx), have been shown to be selective lithium sorbents (Li et al., 2018). Many of the lithium sorbents under investigation for use in direct lithium extraction from brines are used as cathode materials in lithium-ion batteries (Meshram et al., 2014). Dow Chemical Company first proposed using microcrystalline AlOH embedded in anion-exchange resins for the selective removal of lithium from brines (Lee and Bauman, 1979). Ooi, Miyai and co-workers first proposed the use of manganese oxides (MnOx) as sorbents for the recovery lithium from seawater (Ooi et al., 1986; Miyai et al., 1988). TiOx materials are used in lithium-ion batteries and their application to recovery of lithium from brines has been proposed more recently (Zhu et al., 2012; Chaban et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2017; Li et al., 2018; Chaban et al., 2019). The properties of inorganic crystalline sorbents have been scientifically investigated and efforts are underway to apply these solid sorbents in engineered systems for the selective recovery of lithium from natural and industrial fluids, including geothermal brines. Crystalline metal structures are selective for the sorption of lithium because they have numerous cation-exchange sites that are protected inside a crystal matrix that serves as a molecular sieve. The molecular sieve selectively allows small lithium ions to access internal ion- exchange sites, whereas larger cations are excluded from internal sites (Feng et al., 1992; Feng et al., 1993; Chitrakar et al., 2001; Zhang Stringfellow and Dobson 3PDF Image | Lithium Extraction from Hybrid Geothermal Power
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Product and Development Focus for Infinity Turbine
ORC Waste Heat Turbine and ORC System Build Plans: All turbine plans are $10,000 each. This allows you to build a system and then consider licensing for production after you have completed and tested a unit.Redox Flow Battery Technology: With the advent of the new USA tax credits for producing and selling batteries ($35/kW) we are focussing on a simple flow battery using shipping containers as the modular electrolyte storage units with tax credits up to $140,000 per system. Our main focus is on the salt battery. This battery can be used for both thermal and electrical storage applications. We call it the Cogeneration Battery or Cogen Battery. One project is converting salt (brine) based water conditioners to simultaneously produce power. In addition, there are many opportunities to extract Lithium from brine (salt lakes, groundwater, and producer water).Salt water or brine are huge sources for lithium. Most of the worlds lithium is acquired from a brine source. It's even in seawater in a low concentration. Brine is also a byproduct of huge powerplants, which can now use that as an electrolyte and a huge flow battery (which allows storage at the source).We welcome any business and equipment inquiries, as well as licensing our turbines for manufacturing.CONTACT TEL: 608-238-6001 Email: greg@infinityturbine.com (Standard Web Page)