Mercury-free electrochemical lithium isotope separation could fuel a fusion future

A cheap and non-toxic way to selectively separate lithium isotopes – without using huge amounts of mercury – could help supply the future fuel needs of fusion reactors. The new approach uses a porous vanadium oxide compound that acts as an isotope-sensitive filter, sequestering the lighter lithium-6 isotope, while allowing lithium-7 to pass through faster. ‘If nuclear fusion plans become a reality, we’ll need to produce tonnes of lithium-6 per day and I think that this would be a very competitive method for doing so,’ says Sarbajit Banerjee of ETH Zürich in Switzerland and Texas A&M University in the US who led the study.