Course curriculum

  • 1

    Introduction

    • Welcome video

      FREE PREVIEW

    • Recommended starting competences

    • Meet the teachers

    • Learning objectives

    • What do you want to learn?

    • Have a look at what other students want to learn

    • Present yourself to your classmates

    • Have a look at your classmates

    • Become familiar with the learning platform

    • Good practices to use this course
  • 2

    Knowledge refresher

    • Basic chemistry knowledge

    • Where do you stand?

    • Download handout and periodic table
  • 3

    Lithium - an element in demand

    • Properties

    • Applications

    • Processing and target products

    • Economics

    • What have you learnt about lithium?
  • 4

    Types of primary resources and basics of extraction

    • Primary resources

    • Extraction technologies

    • Pros and cons of brines and spodumene mining
  • 5

    Salt lakes as lithium resources

    • Salt lake terminology

    • Photo gallery

    • Important lithium brine deposits

    • Salt lake cross word puzzle

    • Chemical requirements for the recovery of lithium

    • Summary on the recovery of lithium from brines
  • 6

    Theory of salt solution equilibria

    • It's all about equilibria

    • Basic terms of salt solution equilibria

    • Electrolyte solutions

    • Concentration units

    • Solid phases

    • Equilibrium between liquid and solid phase

    • Summary on salt solution equilibria
  • 7

    Salt chemical background for the separation of lithium from major brine components

    • Experimental investigation of solubility equilibria

    • Temperature dependence of solubility - binary solubility diagrams

    • Example: Binary system lithium chloride - water

    • Influence on solubility by a second salt - ternary solubility diagrams

    • First attempt for the calculation of a phase diagram

    • Introduction of activity coefficients

    • Phase diagrams and processes

    • Why thermodynamic modeling?
  • 8

    Geochemical modeling with PHREEQC

    • Relevant thermodynamic quantities

    • Introduction to geochemical modeling

    • Pitzer ion interaction model

    • Thermodynamic database (THEREDA)

    • The PHREEQC program

    • Downloads

    • First steps with PHREEQC

    • PHREEQC cheat sheet of input keywords

    • Helpful links
  • 9

    Production of target products for the lithium market

    • End of pond evaporation

    • Lithium carbonate

    • Lithium chloride

    • Lithium hydroxide

    • Lithium metal
  • 10

    Conclusion

    • Concluding video

    • What did you learn?

    • How can we improve this course?

    • Read what others want to improve on this course

    • Further reading
  • 11

    References

    • References
  • 12

    Evaluate this course

    • How this evaluation is structured

    • Evaluate this course

Course description

The course will give you an insight into the chemistry behind winning processes of the strategic element lithium. Focus is set on lithium separation from salt lake brines and the subsequent process steps toward marketable products (especially lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide) in battery grade quality. Following this application case, you will learn fundamentals of electrolyte chemistry and solubility equilibria. After completing the course, you will be familiar with solubility diagrams of simple and complex systems. You will understand how these diagrams are determined experimentally and how you can apply them to design and monitor industrial processes. Even though secondary resources will not be discussed here in detail, the same principles and concepts can be applied to the separation of lithium from waste/recycling streams. Experimental investigations of salt-solution equilibria will be explained as well as the theoretical description of these equilibria by quantitative calculations and modelling (Pitzer ion interaction model). We will introduce you to the geochemical modelling software PHREEQC in such a way that by the end of the course you can carry out your own multi-temperature calculations of solubility and precipitation processes in complex electrolyte solutions.

Instructor(s)

Professor

Gero Frisch

Professor at Salt and Mineral Chemistry Group from Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany Research interests: Ionic Liquids, Electrochemistry, Salt Chemistry, Mineral Chemistry, Metallurgy

Professor

Wolfgang Voigt

Salt and Mineral Chemistry Group from Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany

Senior Instructor

Julia Sohr

Salt and Mineral Chemistry Group from Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany