(408e) a Novel Selective Ion Separation Process Using Battery System

The increase of demand for rare metals and the decrease of the available ores make it interesting to develop separation processes for extracting metal ions from solutions such as brine lakes, seawater, and industrial waste water. In general, that solutions contain a mixture of salts and the concentration of valuable resource is very low, so it is required to develop a highly selective resource recovery technology. Distillation, adsorption and membrane processes are well-known separation technologies for ion separation from solutions, however, the selectivity, energy requirement, and operation costs are not sufficient. Therefore, a new approach to develop an efficient ion separation process is needed. In this work, we investigated the highly selective and energy efficient resource recovery process using battery system. The system consists of two battery electrodes which have ion selectivity. It operates a similar way to rechargeable batteries, and target ions are selectively extracted and released by charging/discharging step. Using this battery system, lithium or sodium ion are successfully separated from salt water even the solutions contain highly concentrated various ions (Yoon et al., Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2013; Yoon et al., Energy Environ. Sci., 2014, Yoon et al., Chemosphere, 2015). This battery system has not only energy saving process with efficient energy consumption but also eco-friendly process without chemical adding during the operation. The battery system could be a suitable method for ion separation process for selectively extracting metal ions.

Reference

Jaehan Lee, Seung-Ho Yu, Choonsoo Kim, Yung-Eun Sung, Jeyong Yoon, Highly selective lithium recovery from brine using a λ-MnO₂-Ag battery, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 2013, 15, 7690-7695.

Jaehan Lee, Seoni Kim, Choonsoo Kim, Jeyong Yoon, Hybrid capacitive deionization to enhance the desalination performance of capacitive techniques, Energy & Environmental Science, 2014, 7, 3683-3689.

Seoni Kim, Jaehan Lee, Jin Soo Kang, Kyusik Jo, Seonghwan Kim, Yung-Eun Sung, Jeyong Yoon, Lithium recovery from brine using a λ-MnO₂/activated carbon hybrid supercapacitor system, Chemosphere, 2015, 125, 50-56.