Multiple major scientific and technological innovation achievements were released at the upcoming Hunan Lithium Resources Innovation and Application Conference.

Among them, the comprehensive lithium extraction technology for harmless lithium slag developed by Hunan Dazhonghe Lithium Mine Co., Ltd. is particularly noteworthy.

The comprehensive lithium extraction technology for harmless treatment of lithium slag is a process method for extracting lithium from lithium mica ore. Its core is to use sulfuric acid to react with lithium mica, purify the leachate through low-temperature roasting and water leaching, remove impurities, extract lithium from the ore, and ultimately convert it into lithium carbonate or other lithium products.

This technology not only significantly improves resource utilization, but also makes significant breakthroughs in environmental performance.

The development of this technology can be traced back to 2006. After three years of research and development, the company’s technical team successfully completed the small-scale trial in 2009 and entered the pilot production stage in 2012.

However, during the trial production, the complex environment of industrial production brought a series of technical difficulties such as equipment corrosion and material selection, which once put the research and development work in a predicament.

Li Hanwen, deputy general manager of the company, introduced that they have conducted extensive verification work in materials and equipment, experiencing thousands of failures. Until around 2021, they gradually found some equipment and material selections that are more suitable for actual working conditions.

The technical team found during the research and development process that the lithium battery industry mainly faces two core pain points. Firstly, the environmental pressure caused by the excessive toxicity of smelting slag, and enterprises have to bear the high cost of solid waste treatment. Secondly, the traditional lithium recovery rate is less than 80%, and the comprehensive utilization of valuable metals has not been achieved, resulting in high production costs.

And this new technology has successfully solved the two major problems of environmental protection and cost.

“Firstly, we have reduced the toxicity of smelting slag to below the standard of Class I solid waste through technological means, making it commercially available for direct market sales and use, freeing it from environmental pressures. At the same time, in terms of cost control, we have achieved a high degree of comprehensive utilization, with an overall recovery rate about 10 percentage points higher than traditional processes. In addition, we have comprehensively utilized valuable metals among them, ensuring the comprehensive recycling and utilization of national valuable resources, avoiding waste, and significantly reducing the production cost of lithium carbonate. Our production cost has been reduced from the traditional 60,000 to 80,000 yuan/ton to less than 40,000 yuan/ton, thus completely solving environmental and cost problems.”

The successful industrial application of this technology has injected strong impetus into the development of the company. With technological advantages, the enterprise has achieved significant optimization in ecological protection and production costs, significantly enhancing the competitiveness and profitability of its products, and continuously releasing production capacity.

“Due to our environmental and cost advantages at the source, this has laid a favorable foundation for building a complete lithium battery industry chain. In the future, we will not only gradually increase the production of lithium carbonate, but also extend the chain to downstream fields, such as lithium dihydrogen phosphate, lithium iron phosphate, and metallic lithium products,” said Li Hanwen.

Chinese source: linwuxinwen