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Crystallizer Process Flowsheets & Simulations

Explore 2 validated, solved Crystallizer simulation flowsheets in MaximaLabs — real components: water, nacl, li, mg, lioh, h2so4. Open any one directly in your browser.

Solved via: BRINE.

Brine
DLE
Spent Brine
Eluent
Elute MIX
RO PUMP
RO
RO Permeate
BPED
Steam1
feed
steam
conc
vapor
cond
Evap1
feed
steam
conc
vapor
cond
Evap2
Evap1 Condensate
Evap2 Condensate
feed
solid
liq
Cryst
LIOH Product
Mother Liquor
Salar de Atacama, Chile

Direct lithium extraction + LiOH crystallization

A Salar-brine DLE train: an Al-based sorbent column selectively loads Li+ (rejecting the brine's much larger Mg2+ background — real DLE sorbents cut a ~290:1 Mg/Li mass ratio down to under 1:1), the loaded sorbent is eluted with fresh water into an aqueous strip liquor (bridging the sorption column's own documented single-pass-loading scope), RO concentrates it, a real bipolar-membrane electrodialysis (BPED) cell converts LiCl to LiOH — Faraday's law links the applied current/membrane area/current efficiency to the actual Li+ transport rate (replacing an earlier placeholder fixed-conversion reactor), reporting real cell voltage and electrical power draw — and a forward-feed two-effect evaporator train (vapor from effect 1 heats effect 2) concentrates it to battery-grade LiOH·H2O crystals. Real boiling-point elevation throughout via the Pitzer-electrolyte brine thermo package. Isotherm parameters per the sorption column's own citation (2024 Desalination study, Al-based DLE sorbent). Honesty note: the BPED cell still tracks only the lumped li/lioh solute pair this brine thermo package carries (no first-class Cl-/H+/OH- species), so it produces one outlet stream (the Li+ -> LiOH conversion) rather than a genuine two-compartment acid+base product split — see flowsim/solver/unitops/bped.py for the exact scope.

17 unit ops • BRINE

18 0

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Fast convergence
Blackmass
ACID
Leach
Residue Product
Organic FEED
feed
solv
ext
raff
SX
Impurity Extract Product
BPED
feed
solid
liq
Cryst
LIOH Crystal Product
Mother Liquor Product
Nashville, Tennessee, USA

Battery black-mass recycling: leach -> SX -> BPED -> LiOH crystallization

Spent-battery black mass (an NMC111-like LiNi1/3Mn1/3Co1/3O2 lump, sulfuric acid-leached at a screening-level yield/stoichiometry — see acid_leach.py's stated scope) dissolves into a pregnant leach solution carrying Li/Co/Ni/Mn. A 15-stage D2EHPA solvent-extraction circuit (the same real pH-isotherm chemistry the co-ni-solvent-extraction example uses, operated at pH 7.5 -- above every curated Co/Ni/Mn pH50 -- so all three transition metals extract into the kerosene organic phase while Li, which has no curated D2EHPA isotherm, stays in the aqueous raffinate untouched) purifies the liquor before it ever reaches the lithium-recovery chemistry. A Faraday's-law bipolar-membrane electrodialysis (BPED) cell (the same real electrochemistry as the direct-lithium-extraction example, sized up for this liquor's larger Li flow) converts Li+ to LiOH, which an MSMPR crystallizer takes to battery-grade LiOH solid. Every step reuses an already-real, independently-tested unit op (acid_leach.py, extraction_column.py, bped.py, crystallizer.py) chained into the one train none of them had been assembled into before. Honesty notes: no acid-consumption or neutralization mass balance between the strongly-acidic leach liquor and the pH-7.5 SX stage (the pH is an operator-set circuit condition, the same simplification co-ni-solvent-extraction already makes, not a titration model); the recovered Co/Ni/Mn organic concentrate leaves as a single product stream rather than being split into separate refined metal products (a further SX/strip train, out of scope here).

11 unit ops • BRINE

19 0

View & open

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