Cara Philipa Haller, Christie Dorfling
The growing lithium demand has led to increasing interest in low-grade clay deposits. In this study, a roast–leach process was investigated for the recovery of lithium from a Southern African smectite-rich clay deposit. Screening of various roasting additives showed that a binary system comprising sodium sulphate and calcium sulphate yielded the highest lithium dissolution during subsequent water leaching, and was therefore selected for optimisation tests. Roasting at 850 ◦C for 1.5 h, using a clay:total salt ratio of 2:1 and Na2SO4:CaSO4 ratio of 1:2, followed by subsequent water leaching at 60 ◦C and 30% solids, resulted in 86.3% lithium dissolution after 2 h. Compared with direct acid leaching of the same clay deposit, the roast–leach process improved lithium selectivity over multivalent ions, modified the clay’s swelling behaviour to enable leaching at higher solids content, and produced an alkaline leach solution, eliminating the need for neutralisation.
@article{533acbb9-b0e9-496d-b162-31f755a3b361,
title={2026 Haller Lithium recovery from smectite clays},
author={Cara Philipa Haller and Christie Dorfling},
year={2026},
language={en}
}TY - JOUR TI - 2026 Haller Lithium recovery from smectite clays AU - Cara Philipa Haller AU - Christie Dorfling PY - 2026 LA - en ER -
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