Is It Really the First Lithium Refining Platform in North America?
Over the last week my news feed has been full of headlines like this: North America’s First Commercial Lithium Refining Facility Launches and North America just got its first new kind of lithium refinery. But the accompanying articles have been light on technical details. That led to some interesting messages, including one that started with “WTF is this?” from a ABAT 0.00%↑ tor.
As always, the articles are heavy on the “who” and “where” but light on the “how” and “what.”
The “who” is a company called Mangrove Lithium, and the “where” is Canada.
The “how” is electrochemistry.
Mangrove’s platform is adapted from chlor-alkali processing, a well established industrial method that uses electricity to drive chemical reactions and separate ions across a series of membrane-divided chambers.
To understand how that works, it helps to know what an ion is. When an atom gains or loses electrons it becomes electrically charged. A positively charged atom is called a cation and a negatively charged atom is called an anion. Collectively they are called ions. The entire process is built around creating and moving specific ions in specific directions using electric fields and selective membranes.
The first and most important of the reactions happens at the gas diffusion cathode. Oxygen is supplied to the cathode, where it is reduced, meaning it gains extra electrons. When oxygen picks up those extra electrons, it becomes highly reactive, carrying more charge than it can hold in that state. To stabilize itself, it attacks two water molecules (2H₂O) to grab their protons which results in breaking their structural bonds. By capturing these electrons and pulling protons from the water, the oxygen transforms into the final result: hydroxide ions (OH⁻).