The contract processing of lithium has been increasingly important around the world as the substance enjoys growing use in batteries for electric vehicles and electronic devices. However, the industry has had to work hard to address several environmental concerns.

Although lithium has the advantage of acting as a means of powering electric cars and therefore reducing and eventually eliminating carbon emissions and other pollution from petrol and diesel use, this good news story is offset by a series of problems:

  • Extraction methods are often very water-intensive and can cause pollution
  • Shipping lithium long distances around the world comes with a high carbon footprint
  • Many processing plants, the great majority of which are in China, are run on energy provided by fossil fuels
  • Batteries are not as efficient as desired and pose a fire hazard

These issues raise some significant questions for the sector. Pollution and high carbon footprints threaten to defeat the object of using lithium batteries in vehicles, while limited energy efficiency and fire hazards are a deterrent to their use.

However, the good news is that the industry has been working on a series of innovations that may provide positive solutions, all of which could encourage demand for lithium and its processing.

 

How Might Biological Membranes Improve Lithium Extraction Methods?

Among these is a new process being explored by scientists at the University of Birmingham, which aims to use protein-based membranes to extract lithium from brines more efficiently.

The three-year project aims to establish a more effective and less energy-intensive means of separating lithium from sodium by harnessing the benefits of more effective biological membranes.

Explaining how this could translate into more efficient extraction methods, project lead Professor Dominik Kubicki said: “Biology can construct ordered materials with precision that is extremely difficult to achieve using existing manufacturing methods.”

“We aim to harness this to create membranes with uniform, programmable pores,” he added. The uniform size of the pores will mean each one is exactly the right size to distinguish between sodium and lithium atoms.

The £6.2 million project is being funded by the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency and is being carried out with help from researchers at neighbouring Aston University.

 

How Is Advanced Lithium Extraction Aiding The UK Lithium Sector?

It is not the first time researchers from British universities have sought to enhance lithium extraction processes. In 2022, Watercycle Technologies, a Manchester University spin-out, won funding to test its extraction processes using geothermal brines.

That project involved working with Cornish Lithium, but the company has also partnered with Weardale Lithium in County Durham. The technique has been shown to be successful and Weardale Lithium now has permission to build an extraction plant at Eastgate using it.

If the Birmingham project and other innovations are a success, this will enable the extraction of lithium, not least in the domestic sources being developed in England, to give the UK its own lithium industry, to be a much cleaner and less water-intensive process.

 

How Could A New Discovery Improve Lithium Battery Performance?

The development of better batteries will offer improvements at the opposite end of the process and hopes in this area have been boosted by US-based Schrödinger Research, which has published new findings in the science journal Nature.

Its latest work, in combination with researchers from Columbia University and the New York Structural Biology Center, has challenged long-held assumptions about the chemistry of lithium-ion batteries, in particular the behaviour of electrolytes.

The discovery of how the electrolytes group together to form a protective film vital to battery performance despite the absence of anions (negatively charged ions that form when atoms or a group of atoms gain new electrons) should help make design enhancements easier.

As a consequence, the expectation is that this understanding will make it easier to make better batteries, using predictive design instead of trial and error to improve areas such as capacity, speed of charging and storage power.

To the lay person, that might sound like some very complex chemistry, an esoteric matter understood properly only by those in lab coats, but for motorists driving EVs, it will mean greater reliability, quicker charging and an end to ‘range anxiety’ when driving in rural areas.

 

How Is The UK Lithium Industry Developing?

Such technological developments come hard on the heels of the announcement of £10 million of UK government funding to help Geothermal Engineering Limited fund its £43 million lithium mine near Redruth in Cornwall.

This project adds to Cornish Lithium’s nearby projects, but, perhaps just as significantly, the government noted that these developments are taking place alongside the £185 million project by Tees Valley Lithium (TVL) to build one of Europe’s biggest refineries.

By building Britain’s first lithium refinery, TVL may be helping to solve a further problem, that of carbon-intensive processing, by enabling the process to be carried out in the UK.

It was awarded a government grant of £18.3 million last month.