Recovery of Lithium by an Electrostatic Field-Assisted Desorption Process

The conventional recovery system of lithium from lithium adsorbents has environmental and economic drawbacks because it uses acidic solution in the desorption process. To solve this problem, we suggest a novel method that uses electrostatic field assistance with a modified membrane capacitive deionization (MCDI) to desorb lithium without using an acidic solution. The feasibility of this concept was tested by fabricating the electrode and unit cell with modifying the conventional MCDI system and testing its performance. The results of this test were compared to the conventional desorption process. The results showed that the suggested method is a feasible alternative, although the desorption efficiency is low (approximately 45% compared to the conventional desorption process using an acidic solution).