Given the growing demand for lithium in energy storage and electric vehicle industries, the development of acid-resistant membranes for efficient lithium extraction from brine and recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries is crucial for advancing sustainable and scalable resource recovery technologies. Herein, a strong acid-tolerant and positively charged polyurea (PU) nanofiltration (NF) membrane was fabricated via the interfacial polymerization of toluene-2, 4-diisocyanate (TDI) monomers with poly(allylamine) (PAA) monomers with a polyethersulfone ultrafiltration membrane as the substrate. The newly-developed typical PU NF membrane performed high cation-cation separation selectivity (mixed-salt separation factor: 16.6 for Li+/Mg2+, 19.3 for Li+/Ni2+, 11.3 for Li+/Co2+, and 15.7 for Li+/Mn2+) even if exposed to 10 wt% H2SO4 solution for 96 h. The high cation separation accuracy is attributed to the narrow positively-charged ion sieving channels constructed with TDI and PAA as building blocks. The urea units containing abundant bidentate hydrogen bonds and electron-rich dinitrogen atoms is responsible for the excellent acid tolerance of the PU membranes. This work has the potential to contribute to more sustainable and cost-effective lithium recovery from both brine and discarded cathode materials, making it a crucial step toward scaling up these technologies for industrial applications.
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