Lithium extraction process could help meet growing demand for the mineral

Development of the technology from the Monash University startup has been led by Professor Huanting Wang, an Australian Laureate Fellow and the Director of the ARC Research Hub for Energy-efficient Separation at Monash University's Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

“Current lithium extraction methods involve either roasting hard rock at high temperature and dissolving it with hot sulfuric acid, or evaporating brines in a solar pond, both of which use chemicals to precipitate lithium out. It is time consuming, disruptive, expensive and wasteful. My research in nanostructure membranes is all about efficiency and ingenuity to make the most of this limited mineral resource,” Professor Wang said in a statement.

Recognising the potential of this innovation, Monash Engineering's Dr Zhouyou (Emily) Wang has been awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Early Career Industry Fellowship to further develop and commercialise the novel membrane-based technology.

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“Even though seawater is a brine, the concentration of lithium is too low for cost effective extraction, but we are already thinking about designing the next generation of membranes to improve lithium extraction, so maybe in the future we can extract lithium from new sources,” said Dr Wang.