An effective lithium ion-imprinted membrane containing 12-crown ether-4 for selective recovery of lithium

The high lithium content in spent lithium ion batteries (LIBs) and a large number of spent LIBs generation shift the target of lithium recovery to solid waste. Adsorption separation is of great application value for lithium recovery. There is still a lack of a lithium adsorption material with excellent properties. Herein, an environmental hydrolytic polymerization to prepare lithium ion-imprinted membranes (LIIMs) with high adsorption capacity and selectivity is presented. The LIIMs can reach adsorption equilibrium in 40 min, showing fast adsorption kinetics . The optimal adsorption capacity of the LIIMs for Li + was 132.00 mg g −1 after immersing in a 300 mg L −1 LiCl solution based on ample binding sites and a strong affinity force. Langmuir isothermal adsorption results proved that the imprinting sites on LIIMs were homogeneous. The selective separation factors (α) of Li + to Mg 2+ , K + , Ca 2+ , Na + were 6.80, 17.00, 21.30, and 24.60, respectively, which implies the superior selectivity LIIMs toward Li + . The adsorption capacity of LIIMs remained about 97 % after six cycles. Due to the suitable cavity, abundant rebinding sites, and strong affinity, the LIIMs have a good selective adsorption ability to Li + . Therefore, the LIIMs would have potential applications for separating Li + from spent LIBs.