posted on 2021-05-05, 15:10authored byTai-Yuan Huang, Jesús R. Pérez-Cardona, Fu Zhao, John W. Sutherland, Mariappan Parans Paranthaman
Lithium-ion
batteries (LIB) play an essential role in the electrification
of the transportation sector, and battery demand for lithium compounds
will see a significant increase in the coming decades. This has raised
concerns on the supply of lithium, and as a result, technologies are
being developed to process unconventional lithium sources. One promising
technology is to extract lithium from geothermal brine using lithium-aluminum-layered
double hydroxide chloride (LDH) sorbent and forward osmosis. A combined
life cycle assessment (LCA) and techno-economic assessment (TEA) is
conducted to evaluate the environmental and economic performance of
this technology. It is assumed that the lithium extraction unit is
an add-on to a 50 MW geothermal power plant located in California.
The analysis is based on lab-scale experimental data and stoichiometry
while considering the economy of scale for an industrial system. LCA
results suggest that, compared with conventional LiOH and Li2CO3 production pathways, the new technology achieves 1–95%
reduction in environmental impacts. Even higher reduction can be achieved
for LiOH produced via electrolysis. This add-on unit for lithium extraction
could achieve a payback period of less than 1 year and reach net present
values of $454M and $315M and internal rates of return of 792 and
1130% for LiOH and Li2CO3 production pathways,
respectively. The favorable environmental and economic performance
suggests that LDH sorption coupled with forward osmosis has great
potential to enable the domestic production of battery lithium compounds
and that further development should be carried out.