Research progress in extraction and recovery of lithium from hard-rock ores

Lithium is widely used in new types of energy materials and the applications are growing fast. Lithium hard-rock ores are the main resources for lithium production. The trend of lithium recovery from the ores is to realize cleaning and effective production, and resource comprehensive utilizations. Based on the composition and structure analysis of various kinds of lithium ores, its recovery by a variety of methods, such as, typically, acidic, alkaline, salt were reviewed. Future development for the techniques of lithium recovery from ores was also discussed. It is shown that the lithium extraction by acidic methods was usually high. However, the composition of the acidic leachate was complex, resulting in a long process of purification of lithium. It also could cause environmental pollution by off-gas when processing the ores containing fluorine. Alkali and salt based processes had good lithium selectivity, but its extraction was low and the cost was high, and large amounts of solid wastes were generated difficult to store and re-use. Some other methods have both advantages and disadvantages, such as high-temperature chlorination method which has high metal recovery and ready solid residue utilization but has high corrosiveness to the equipment. Therefore, the development of new processes for extracting lithium from ore is focused on reducing the output of waste residue and achieving comprehensive recovery of associated resources. © All Right Reserved.