Title:

Lithium Purification using Bioinspired Redox-Active Pyrogallol

Over half of the worlds raw lithium supply comes from salt flats in South America which contain a mixture of alkali metals like calcium, sodium and lithium. Traditional separation methods are dominated by solvent extraction, which due to the comparable thermodynamics of these metals is costly and inefficient. With a global demand for lithium-ion batteries for automotive and electronic applications, more efficient methods of lithium purification are needed. This work proposes a reusable and biologically inspired membrane that can be electrochemically controlled to separate cations in solution. Pyrogallol, a naturally occurring polyphenolic compound derived from plants, can be auto-oxidatively polymerized onto stainless steel membranes. These electrochemically functional membranes show the potential to remove cations from solution in small amounts of time (< 1 min), and can be easily scaled in size.

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