Development of barium@alginate adsorbents for sulfate removal in lithium refining

Abstract

The demand for lithium has been steadily growing in recent years due to the boom of electric cars. High purity lithium is commonly used in the manufacture of battery grade lithium electrolyte. Sulfate residuals originating from acid leaching of lithium ores must be limited to below 20 mg·L−1 during refining. There are methods to remove sulfate such as membrane processing and chemical precipitation using barium salts. However, membrane separation is unable to achieve the required purity while chemical precipitation often causes secondary contamination with barium and requires extra filtration processes that lead to increased processing costs. In this study, we developed a polymeric matrix ent..