This New Bio-Inspired Membrane Could Make Lithium Extraction Much Cleaner

The need for lithium in EV batteries isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Modern batteries need the stuff, and it isn't exactly the easiest thing to get a hold of. Extracting lithium can be a rigorous, time-consuming, and earth-polluting process. Which is why this new technological breakthrough from the University of Texas at Austin could be huge. It's a new extraction process that essentially uses a new type of bio-inspired filter to extract the lithium faster, easier, and with less harmful waste.

“Lithium is in our phones, our cars and the power grid, but getting it out of the ground cleanly is still a hard problem,” said Manish Kumar, a professor in the Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, in the release. “Our goal is a process that is faster, cleaner and easier to run.”

At the moment, there are three main sources of lithium: hard rocks, salty water brine, and old recycled batteries. But the issue is that lithium isn't ever alone. It mixes and dissolves into other stuff, meaning that even after you extract the rock or evaporate the briny water, you still need to filter the lithium out from other materials. And that's where the new filter comes in.

Photo by: Porsche

The University of Texas at Austin developed nanoscale, artificial channels inspired by the natural ways that ions pass in and out of living cells. These artificial channels are built into a newly developed membrane and let lithium ions through, while filtering out everything else, without the need for dangerous chemicals or solvents.

“We now have a toolkit rather than a one-off result,” said Harekrushna Behera, a research scientist in Kumar’s lab. “By understanding how ions interact with the chemical groups at the channel entrance, we can work toward designing more selective channels for lithium and potentially other critical minerals.”

More experiments are need to see if this technology can work at an industrial scale. However, early results seem promising. Any new technology that can improve and clean up lithium extraction will make EV batteries even better for our planet.

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