Hydrometallurgical Recovery of Lithium, Copper, and Battery Metals
This community develops chemical processes to extract and separate lithium, copper, nickel, cobalt, and manganese from spent lithium-ion batteries, industrial residues, and natural ores.
The work centers on hydrometallurgical techniques, specifically acid leaching, solvent extraction, and flotation separation. A significant portion of the research focuses on recycling spent lithium-ion batteries to recover cathode metals, while another major strand addresses the extraction of lithium from brines and the processing of copper and manganese residues. Deep eutectic solvents and choline chloride are frequently investigated as alternative media for these separation processes. Life cycle assessments are integrated into the study of these recovery pathways to evaluate their environmental footprint.
The community is most prominent in lithium research, accounting for 8.4% of all tracked lithium literature and comprising 3,394 papers. It also represents 5.9% of copper research (2,403 papers) and 4.0% of manganese research (1,751 papers).
The group comprises 19,355 papers, published primarily in Minerals Engineering, Hydrometallurgy, and Separation and Purification Technology.
Recent work continues to focus on optimizing lithium extraction from low-quality brines and refining the hydrometallurgical processing of spent battery cathodes, with specific attention to selective flotation and bioleaching mechanisms.