Hydrometallurgical Treatment of Pegmatite Ore for the Recovery of Battery-grade Lithium Chloride (LiCl) Precursor Compound

This study presents a hydrometallurgical process for the recovery of battery-grade precursor compound from pegmatite ore, adopting calcium chloride-assisted roasting and aqueous leaching technique were employed.Pegmatite ore of Nigerian Origin were subjected to thermal treatment in the presence of CaCl2 at varying temperatures (500-750 C) to enhance the solubility of target metal species of lithium.This was subsequently followed by aqueous leaching under controlled conditions of 85 C temperature, 10 g/L solid-to-liquid ratio, 120 minutes to optimize lithium recovery.The influence of parameters of CaCl2 dosage on leachability was systematically investigated.Study reveals that a temperature of 700 C and 1: 3 ore / CaCl2 gave maximum lithium extraction of 91.1 %.Analytical techniques including XRD, ICP-OES, and SEM-EDS were employed to characterize the roasted solids and leachates, confirming the transformation of phases into soluble intermediates.The process achieved selective recovery of high-purity precursor chloride compound of highgrade value.