Phosphorylated hazelnut shell waste for sustainable lithium recovery application as biosorbent

Hazelnut shell waste was phosphorylated to develop a novel biosorbent based on natural renewable resource for the recovery of lithium from aqueous solution. For the synthesized biosorbent, the surface morphology and mapping by SEM–EDS, chemical properties by FTIR, elemental analysis by XPS, specific surface area by BET, crystallinity by XRD and thermal properties by TGA were elucidated elaborately. The influence of biosorbent dosage, initial concentration, temperature, contact time, pH and coexisting ions were investigated. The equilibrium sorption capacity reached 6.03 mg/g under optimal conditions (i.e., biosorbent dosage of 12.0 g/L, initial Li concentration of 100 mg/L, pH value of 5.8, sorption temperature of 25 °C, and sorption time of 6 min). According to the sorption behavior of the phosphorylated hazelnut shell waste the Freundlich model proved to be more suitable than the Langmuir model indicating maximum sorption capacity as 7.71 mg/g at 25 °C. Thermodynamic parameters obtained by different isokinetic temperatures disclosed that the ion exchange reaction was feasible, spontaneous, and exothermic where the interaction between biosorbent surface and solvent plays an important role. A preliminary test on the Li recovery from geothermal water was also performed to check its applicability in a real brine. Desorption studies at 25 °C revealed that relatively higher desorption efficiency and capacity were achieved at 97.4% and 5.93 mg/g, respectively with a 1.0 M H₂SO₄ among other regenerants (i.e., HCl and NaCl). Concentrations of Li and the other cations were determined via ICP-OES. Due to such outstanding features, the novel phosphorylated hazelnut shell waste had great potential for lithium recovery from aqueous solution by being added value as a waste and recovering a strategic element of modern life simultaneously.