【Ten Years of Great Progress in Chemical Technology】173-2023: China’s first pilot plant for lithium extraction from gas field water passes performance tests

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This post was last edited by Desert Fish on 2023-7-28 at 07:36. Ten years of rapid development in chemical technology – let’s celebrate the prosperity and strength of modern China. This is just a starting point; more participation from everyone will make things even more lively. Haichuan becomes better with your involvement, so we welcome everyone to join in the discussions on this forum. Be careful with fire as the heat increases in July. --------------------------------------------On July 18, 2023, after 72 hours of stable operation, the first domestic pilot plant for lithium extraction from gas field water, developed through cooperation between CPECC’s Southwest Branch, PetroChina’s Southwest Oil and Gas Field Company, and East China University of Science and Technology – namely the industrial pilot plant for lithium extraction from high-sulfur gas fields in the Longwangmiao formation – met all the design requirements. The purity of the lithium carbonate produced was 99.2%, with an average daily output of 135 kg of lithium carbonate. This marks the successful completion of the performance tests for this first domestic pilot plant for lithium extraction from gas field water, and it will now move from the trial operation phase to full-scale production. China is the world’s largest lithium consumer, but its lithium reserves account for only 7% of the global total, and there is a significant mismatch between production capacity at various stages of the lithium industry chain. Taking it as its responsibility to ensure the country’s energy security and promote the development of new energy sources, the Southwest Branch of CPECC has carried out research and technological efforts to extract lithium from gas field water, given the fact that lithium in such water is abundant and readily available. Pilot tests were conducted in the Longwangmiao Formation gas reservoir. 　　Considering the high sulfur and salt content, low lithium abundance in the water from the gas reservoirs in the Longwangmiao Formation, as well as the great difficulties associated with the green separation, enrichment, and extraction of lithium at low concentrations in systems characterized by complex compositions and coexistence of multiple elements, CPECC Southwest Branch, together with Southwest Oil and Gas Field Company and East China University of Science and Technology, formed a research team to systematically investigate the lithium content in the water from the gas reservoirs in the Longwangmiao Formation, and to develop pilot-scale process designs and technical approaches for this purpose. 　　Through thorough analysis and repeated testing, the research team overcame various challenges such as high levels of impurity ions and organic substances in gas field water, low lithium content, and high sulfur levels. They developed an efficient, environmentally friendly preprocessing method based on complete mixing flow technology, along with an ion-targeted adsorption process, thus creating a technical approach that combines gas field water preprocessing with high-efficiency lithium-ion sieve adsorbents for lithium extraction. A medium-scale test facility for the entire lithium extraction process was built, as well as China’s first industrial-scale pilot plant for continuous gas field water lithium extraction; this plant was successfully put into operation on December 30, 2022.