- Researchers at Columbia Engineering have developed a new solvent-based technique that could extract lithium from brine much faster than traditional evaporation ponds, potentially unlocking new sources of the critical battery metal.
- The method, described in the journal Joule, uses a temperature-responsive solvent to selectively pull lithium from complex brines and opens the door to recovering lithium from geothermal fluids, oilfield wastewater, and other unconventional resources.
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