By: Franyi Sarmiento, Ph.D., Inspenet, October 7, 2022
Lithium production is mainly based on the extraction of hard rock in mines or brine in salt flats, which inevitably generates a high environmental impact.
[post_relacionado]Whereas, the process of extracting petroleum from oil wells is called nanofiltration, a membrane filtration process, which is widely used to soften and disinfect water.
For its part, oil is obtained from drilling that allows the exchange of crude oil for brine of salt water. The approximate proportion is 20 liters of brine for every 4 liters of oil, which in practice means an intensive use of water that does not benefit the environment.
For decades, the oil industry has used petroleum brine as a waste product by injecting it into the ground to promote recovery or remove oil.
However, there is a technique that has been developed in recent years and that consists of extracting lithium from the residual brine present in oil wells to recover minerals such as silicon, magnesium, potassium or lithium.
Salt water brine from oil wells does not usually contain more than 1% oil, however, it accumulates up to 95% lithium carbonate. The result of its extraction is known as petroleum.
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