Ricerc@Sapienza

Mineral evolution is concerned with the timing of mineral occurrences, such as the earliest reported occurrences in the geologic record. Minerals containing essential Li have not been reported from rocks older than ca. 3000 Ma, thus the lithian tourmaline (fluor-elbaite) and mica (lepidolite) assemblage from a pegmatite near Zishineni associated with the ca. 3000 Ma Sinceni Pluton presents unusual interest. Fluor-elbaite (0.75-0.98 F per formula unit) forms green crystals up to 50 trim long. Spindle stage measurements give omega = 1.652(1), epsilon = 1.627(1) (589.3 nm).

This work presents an enhanced hydrometallurgical process for recycling lithium ion batteries. First, end-of-life batteries were processed in a physical pre-treatment plant to obtain a representative electrode material. The resulting leachate was purified forth by iron-precipitation, liquid–liquid extractions, and an innovative Li–Na separation, in order to obtain valuable products. These products include high-grade graphite, cobalt oxide (Co3O4, purity 83%), cobalt oxalate (CoC2O4, purity 96%), nickel oxide (NiO, purity 89%), and lithium carbonate (Li2CO3, purity 99.8%).

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is an age-related neurodegenerative disorder with multifactorial etiopathogenesis, characterized by progressive loss of memory and other cognitive functions. A fundamental neuropathological feature of AD is the early and severe brain cholinergic neurodegeneration. Lithium is a monovalent cation classically utilized in the treatment of mood disorders, but recent evidence also advances a beneficial potentiality of this compound in neurodegeneration.

Considering that solutions for the steady-state power exhaust problem in future fusion reactors (e.g. DEMO) are not provided by present experiments and it is uncertain if they will be provided by ITER, because the expected heat fluxes, as well as the level of neutron irradiation, will be much higher, dedicated work packages are being devoted to this problem within EUROfusion and even a dedicated facility (the Divertor Tokamak Test ? DTT) is being proposed in Italy. Among the possible options, a liquid metal (LM) divertor is being considered.

Lithium-ion batteries are a popular choice of power source for a variety of energy and power demanding applications for both stationary applications and electromobility. Among electrochemical storage systems, Lithium-ion batteries were found to be promising candidate, due to their high power and high energy density. In order to assemble high power batteries for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and pure electric vehicles, several hundreds of large-format Lithium-ion cells will be required, and even more cells for power/energy demanding stationary applications.