Lithium-6 is an essential isotope to generate tritium in situ in breeding blankets of future fusion reactors.
The separation of this isotope from the more abundant lithium-7 (7.5:92.5) is challenging due to the very similar reactivity and weight of the two isotopes. Several methods have been tested over the last decades, but none has been deployed on an industrial scale apart from the COLEX process, largely ban due to acute environmental concerns.
In this project, we intend to develop an environmentally safe and scalable process based on the migration of lithium ions in an electric field through a selective composite membrane. This research is at the crossroad of material science, electrochemistry, and analytical chemistry, making use of state-of-the-art equipment available at VTT.
