Driven by the rapid growth of new energy vehicles and energy storage, development of lithium extraction technologies from salt lake brines has been considerably stimulated. This work introduces a novel method for structure and surface co-modification of the manganese-based lithium ion-sieve H1.6Mn1.6O4 (HMO-EtOH & SDS) sub-micron spheres, employing ethanol (EtOH) and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) as the additives. The HMO-EtOH & SDS sub-micron spheres exhibit a uniform spherical morphology, narrow size distribution (300-600 nm), small average particle size (0.44 µm), large specific surface area (120.06 m2 g-1), super-hydrophilicity and relatively rich porous structure. When utilized as the adsorbents, HMO-EtOH & SDS sub-micron spheres demonstrate a high equilibrium adsorption capacity (qe=56.71 mg g-1) and a fast adsorption rate (te=3.0 h), with a maximum adsorption capacity of 58.74 mg g-1. After five cycles of adsorption, an excellent cycling performance (retention rate: 80.23 wt%) and low manganese dissolution rate (below 5.25 wt%) have been accomplished. Additionally, for extraction of lithium from the simulated salt brine, an equilibrium adsorption capacity of 25.41 mg g-1and relatively high separation coefficients ( α LiMg=412.33, α LiNa=2120.57) have also been achieved.
Liu et al. (Wed,) studied this question.