The evaluation of the clays and the tailings of Kirka borax mine through lithium contents

Lithium, which is used with many industrial applications and getting important in energy sector, exists in the Kırka Borax clays and the tailings of industry with a remarkable increase day by day. For this purpose, samples were collected from clays in the borax zone, clays which were separated before enrichment and tailing pool. Chemical and mineralogical analyses were performed on the samples. Lithium was determined as 1650 ppm in borax zone, 1570 ppm in solid waste and 980 ppm in tailing pool. In the mineralogical experiments, it was figured out that the Kırka clays are dolomitic clays. It has been demonstrated that lithium is in the clay minerals or dolomite in this study. Dolomite has been seen nodular and co-size with clays in SEM experiments. Clays and dolomite were separated with centrifuge process and were controlled by XRD experiments. As a result of the separation process, Lithium was determined 3165 ppm in the clays with a significant enrichment and 475 ppm in dolomite. This indicates that an amount of the clay remains in dolomite. For the purpose of recovery of lithium from clay samples, the clays were mixed with different amounts of calcite-gypsum and roasting-water leach method was practised. The highest amount of Li was determined, with a mixture of smectite-gypsum roasting water leach in 5:1 ratios, 2638 ppm in the solution.