Lithium and other critical minerals play a vital role in reducing carbon dioxide emissions by enabling advanced technologies such as electric vehicles, electronics, and renewable energy storage systems. The commercialization of adsorption and ion-exchange processes has facilitated efficient and cost-effective recovery of lithium and critical minerals from brine solutions in significantly shorter timeframes. However, these methods often rely on expensive trial-and-error experimentation to optimize adsorption–desorption cycles, largely due to the lack of robust process modeling techniques. To address this challenge, this study presents a comprehensive adsorption process modeling approach that accounts for a range of solution concentrations and pH levels. The modeling results are validated against experimental data for adsorption equilibrium, kinetics, and column breakthrough behavior. Furthermore, given the unique composition of brine solutions that affects lithium and critical mineral recovery, use cases are developed using both steady-state and dynamic modeling approaches by leveraging the advanced capabilities of various Aspen Plus family products. These use cases highlight key aspects of an end-to-end solution for extracting lithium and critical minerals from brine solutions.
