Lithium purification and conversion

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2023088458-A1
Application number	US-202218052647-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Nov 4, 2022
Priority date	Jul 30, 2021
Publication date	Mar 23, 2023
Grant date	—

Abstract

Lithium recovery processes are described using vaporization and conversion techniques. A vaporizer can be used to concentrate lithium and precipitate impurities. A conversion process can be used to replace anions in lithium bearing streams by adding a second anion and precipitating lithium in a salt with the second anion. Rotary separation can be used to separate the precipitated lithium salt.

First claim

We claim:

1 . A method of recovering lithium from a brine source, comprising:
extracting lithium from the brine source using an adsorption/desorption process to form a lithium extract; concentrating the lithium extract during a concentration stage to yield a lithium concentrate stream, wherein the concentration stage includes using a series of membrane separations to separate a brine stream with high lithium concentration, as a non-permeating stream, from a brine stream with low lithium concentration, as a permeating stream.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the permeating stream and non-permeating stream flow in a counter-current format.

3 . The method of claim 2 , wherein the permeating stream and non-permeating stream flow from membrane to membrane in opposite sequential orientations.

4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the lithium concentrate stream is obtained from the non-permeating stream.

5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein concentrating the lithium extract also yields a dilute brine stream, obtained from the permeating stream.

6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the extraction stage includes contacting a brine source stream with a lithium selective medium to load the medium with lithium and contacting an eluent stream with the lithium-loaded medium to form the lithium extract.

7 . The method of claim 6 , wherein concentrating the lithium extract also yields a dilute brine stream, obtained from the permeating stream and wherein the dilute brine stream is recycled for use as eluent stream and/or to the brine source stream.

8 . The method of claim 7 , comprising treating impurities of the dilute brine stream using an impurity removal process.

9 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising converting the lithium concentrate stream during a conversion stage, wherein lithium chloride from the lithium concentrate stream is converted to lithium carbonate and/or hydroxide.

10 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the concentration stage includes additional concentration operations.

11 . The method of claim 10 , including further concentrating lithium salt in the lithium concentrate stream using a vaporizer.

12 . A method of recovering lithium from a brine source, comprising:
extracting lithium from the brine source using an adsorption/desorption process to form a lithium extract; concentrating the lithium extract during a concentration stage to yield a lithium concentrate, wherein the concentration stage includes using a membrane separation process with a plurality of membrane separations in series operated in counter-current format.

13 . The method of claim 12 , wherein the membrane separation process includes a permeating stream and a non-permeating stream flowing from membrane to membrane to membrane in opposite sequential orientations.

14 . The method of claim 13 , wherein the lithium concentrate stream is obtained from the non-permeating stream.

15 . The method of claim 13 , wherein a dilute brine stream is obtained from the permeating stream.

16 . The method of claim 12 , wherein the extraction stage includes contacting a brine source stream with a lithium selective medium to load the medium with lithium and contacting an eluent stream with the lithium-loaded medium to form the lithium extract.

17 . The method of claim 16 , wherein the membrane separation process includes a permeating stream and a non-permeating stream flowing from membrane to membrane to membrane in opposite sequential orientations, wherein a dilute brine stream is obtained from the permeating stream and wherein the dilute brine stream is recycled for use as eluent stream and/or to the brine source stream.

18 . The method of claim 17 , comprising treating impurities of the dilute brine stream using an impurity removal process.

19 . The method of claim 12 , further comprising converting the lithium concentrate stream during a conversion stage, wherein lithium chloride from the lithium concentrate stream is converted to lithium carbonate and/or hydroxide.

20 . The method of claim 12 , wherein the concentration stage includes additional concentration operations.

Assignees

• Schlumberger Technology Corp

Inventors

• Sams Gary W
• Binet Florence
• Shampine Rod William
• Perroni Dominic Vincent

Classifications

• C22B26/12 Primary

  Obtaining lithium · CPC title

• C22B3/42

  by ion-exchange extraction · CPC title

• Y02P10/20

  Recycling · CPC title