Five 500 collection cased peristaltic pumps from Watson-Marlow Fluid Technology Solutions are playing an essential position in an illustration plant at Cornish Lithium’s Shallow Geothermal Test Site within the UK.
Originally constructed to test the idea of extracting lithium from geothermal waters, Cornish Lithium is now working on an upgraded version of the take a look at plant as its drilling program expands, ultimately with the purpose of growing an efficient, sustainable and cost-effective lithium extraction provide chain.
The initial enquiry for pumps got here from GeoCubed, a joint venture between Cornish Lithium and Geothermal Engineering Ltd (GEL). GEL owns a deep borehole site at United Downs in Cornwall where plans are in place to fee a £4 million ($5.2 million) pilot plant.
“GeoCubed’s process engineers helped us to design and fee the test plant forward of the G7, which might run on shallow geothermal waters extracted from Cornish Lithium’s own research boreholes,” Dr Rebecca Paisley, Exploration Geochemist at Cornish Lithium, said.
Adam Matthews, Exploration Geologist at Cornish Lithium, added: “Our shallow website centres on a borehole that we drilled in 2019. A special borehole pump [not Watson-Marlow] extracts the geothermal water [mildly saline, lithium-enriched water] and feeds into the demonstration processing plant.”
The five Watson-Marlow 530SN/R2 pumps serve two completely different elements of the take a look at plant, the first of which extracts lithium from the waters by pumping the brine from a container up via a column containing a lot of beads.
“The beads have an active ingredient on their floor that’s selective for lithium,” Paisley defined. “As water is pumped through the column, lithium ions connect to the beads. With the lithium separated, we use two Watson-Marlow 530s to pump an acidic resolution in various concentrations through the column. The acid serves to remove lithium from the beads, which we then transfer to a separate container.
“The pumps are peristaltic, so nothing however the tube comes into contact with the acid resolution.”
She added: “We’re using the remaining 530 series pumps to help understand what other by-products we will make from the water. For occasion, we will reuse the water for secondary processes in business and agriculture. For this reason, we have two other columns working in unison to strip all different elements from the water as we pump it by way of.”
According to Matthews, move rate was among the many primary causes for selecting Watson-Marlow pumps.
“The column wanted a flow fee of 1-2 litres per minute to fit with our test scale, so the 530 pumps had been best,” he says. “The other consideration was selecting between guide or automated pumps. At เกจวัดแรงดัน300psi , as a end result of it was bench scale, we went for handbook, as we knew it will be easy to make changes while we had been still experimenting with process parameters. However, any future business lithium extraction system would in fact reap the benefits of full automation.
เกจวัดแรงดันไทวัสดุ added: “The great thing about having these five pumps is that we are ready to use them to help consider other technologies moving ahead. Lithium extraction from the sort of waters we discover in Cornwall just isn’t undertaken wherever else on the earth on any scale – the water chemistry right here is exclusive.
“It is actually necessary for us to undertake on-site test work with a selection of different companies and applied sciences. We want to devise probably the most environmentally accountable resolution using the optimum lithium restoration technique, at the lowest possible working cost. Using local firms is part of our strategy, notably as continuity of provide is important.”
To assist fulfil the necessities of the next check plant, Cornish Lithium has enquired after extra 530SN/R2 pumps from Watson-Marlow.
“We’ve also requested a quote for a Qdos 120 dosing pump from Watson-Marlow, so we can add a sure quantity of acid into the system and obtain pH stability,” Matthews says. “We’ll be doing more drilling in the coming 12 months, which will allow us to test our know-how on multiple sites.”
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