Factibilidad Tecnico economica de la producción de hidróxido de litio a pequeña escala a partir de salmueras

Published in: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure for Sustainable Cities and Communities: Proceedings of the 17th LACCEI International Multi-Conference for Engineering, Education and Technology
Date of Conference: July 24-26, 2019
Location of Conference: Montego Bay, Jamaica
Authors: Catalina Velásquez (Universidad Finis Terrae, CL)
Victor Cabrera (Universidad Finis Terrae, CL)
(Universidad Finis Terrae)
Full Paper: #12

Abstract:

The electrification of our world is driving a strong increase in demand for lithium and lithium hydroxide, because is a vital raw material for the build-up currently available lithium-ion batteries. Currently approximately 60% of the world’s production of lithium compounds is extracted from brines, a practice that evaporates water on average a million litres of brine per ton of LCE. Due to that the present text is an investigation of a novel method to produce lithium hydroxide from brines in Atacama Desert, Chile. This region presents particular desert climate conditions where water are scarce and to help solve this problem of the conventional production process, was developed and simulated a modified process, with an efficient consumption of water, to improve the environmental sustainability of the production plant. It was found that the water consumption per kilograme of product was modified from one million litres of water per ton of LCE to 2596 litres and process cost is estimated to approximately 3 dollar per kilogram of LCE. Finally it can be said that considering the environmental aspects, the corporate process for LiOH production is also mutually beneficial and the results presented can be considered as guidelines to address the optimization of the industrial process for obtaining the LiOH.