FMSG: Eco: Electrochemical Manufacturing of Lithium Feedstock: from Mining to Production

The goal of this Future Manufacturing Seed Grant (FMSG) project is to enable domestic lithium production by developing methods which can extract lithium ions from unconventional and dilute sources, such as oilfield-produced water, geothermal brines, or desalination brines. Using these dilute sources benefits society as they are not obtained from mining, which is resource intensive and environmentally unfriendly. The process developed in this project will use electricity to trap the lithium ions in a solid crystalline host material, called intercalation. This intercalation material will be tuned to selectively trap only lithium, excluding other ions present in the solution to create a high-quality lithium ion source. This project aims to encourage participation in STEM by outreach to students in grades 5-9 and recruiting undergraduate veterans for research internships. The education and outreach materials will be disseminated to the public via open-access websites and channels to make additional impact. This research will (i) unveil the Li selectivity limit based on the FePO4 host and electrochemical intercalation method, which can be translated to other critical element separation; (ii) generate new fundamental knowledge to optimize Li selectivity to major ions at high reaction rates through morphology, diffusion length, and defect control; (iii) develop 4D-STEM into a powerful tool to reveal atomic and nanoscopic level phase and defect features in inorganic materials, which the materials science community can adopt immediately; (iv) design integrated processes and workflow to realize electrochemical Li feedstock production from mining from dilute unconventional Li sources; (v) gain the capability to predict material degradation to guide further manufacturing investigation direction. This Future Manufacturing award is co-funded by the Division of Chemistry (CHE) in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) and the Divisions of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems (CBET) and Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI) in the Engineering Directorate (ENG). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.