Lithium sorption from aqueous solution with cationic resins

Abstract

In this work, sorption study focused on the lithium removal from water by resins. Adsorption of lithium on activated carbon is limited, but the usage of ion exchange resin has yielded better correlations with the isotherms of Freundlich, Langmuir, Dubinin-Radushkevich and Temkin. In this work, sorption of lithium, from aqueous solutions was investigated; with strong acidic typical cationic Na+ form (Armfield) and weak acidic cationic resin H+ form (Lewatit CNP 80). Optimum sorption conditions were studied with pH and temperature effect, resin dose, lithium concentration and contact time. The optimum conditions for sorption of lithium were found as 0.1 g/L resin dose, 50 ppm lithium solution, at pH 6, 20 degrees C temperature and 90 min contact time. Comparing the correlation coefficients, sorption of lithium with weak acidic resin fits better than the strong acidic resin. Langmuir model and pseudo-second-order kinetics describe that the adsorption of lithium by weak acidic cationic resin fits better.