Recovery of lithium from water and an application to a geothermal water sample

Today, the number of studies carried out on recovery is increasing with the effect of our diminishing natural resources. The supply of lithium, which is used in many industries, is gradually increasing, especially with developing technologies. The recovery of lithium from geothermal waters, which are shown as an alternative to lithium resources, is among the priority research topics. Technologies developed for the direct separation and recovery of lithium from geothermal waters are of great importance to meet the increasing demand for lithium-dependent energy storage. In this thesis study, lithium was recovered from synthetically prepared lithium chloride solution by ion exchange method using commercial cationic resin. After the removal of lithium from water by ion exchange project using cation exchange resin, the lithium retained on the resin was recovered by regeneration process. The lithium removal efficiency of the cationic resin used increased with increasing contact time and the time to reach equilibrium was determined as 2 hours. Box-Behnken statistical experimental design method was used to determine the effect of important operating parameters such as pH, resin amount and initial lithium concentration on ion exchange capacity and the combination that provides maximum lithium removal in lithium removal from water by ion exchange process. According to the response surface method, the optimum pH value for lithium removal was found to be 4. The optimum resin amount was 200 mg at the determined pH value. The highest lithium removal efficiency by ion exchange method using resin was found to be 69.51% at an initial lithium concentration of 30 mg/L. As a result of the regeneration of the resin, the maximum recovery efficiency of lithium was calculated as 98.44%. Finally, experiments were carried out with real geothermal water in accordance with the optimum conditions determined by Box-Benhken statistical analysis method. The maximum lithium removal efficiency with geothermal water was 81.54% and the recovery efficiency was 97.68%.