What is it about?

Lithium is an important rare earth metal in industry, and which is rich in seawater. In this work, lithium ions are selectively recovered by using thermo-responsive hydrogel absorbent microparticles containing crown ether. Upon heating, the hydrogel captured lithium ions is squeezed out like a sponge and the ions are collected. The hydrogel can be reusuable.

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Why is it important?

No use of strong acids for lithium recovery.

Perspectives

This work presents new polymeric hydrogels that can recover lithium ions from sea water and thermo-responsiveness facilitates easy collection of ions and reuse.

Professor In-Woo Cheong
Kyungpook National University

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This page is a summary of: Hydrogel adsorbents of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide-co-methacryloyloxymethyl-12-crown-4) for Li+ recovery prepared by droplet microfluidics, RSC Advances, January 2015, Royal Society of Chemistry,
DOI: 10.1039/c4ra11527a.
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