Li2O from spodumene instead of lithium carbonate: It's good chemistry, but bad physics

Monday 21st January 2019

insight-live.com/material/975">Lithium carbonate is now ultra-expensive. Yet the reactive glaze on the left needs it. Spodumene has a high enough Li2O concentration to be a possible source here. It also has a complex chemistry, but the other oxides it contains are those common to glazes anyway. Using my account at insight-live.com, I did the calculations on a recipe rescue and got a pretty good match in the formulas (lower section in the green boxes). Then I made 10-gram balls and did a GLFL test at 2200F (notice the long crystals in the glass pools below the runways). Not surprisingly, this recipe is very runny; that's why the tiny yellow crystals grow during cooling. The new version fires very similarly, perhaps better. Our calculated cost to mix this recipe in 2022 was $17.84/kg vs. $10.40/kg. But there is a practical cost: Poor slurry properties. The spodumene sources so much Al2O3 that 70% Alberta Slip had to be dropped to accommodate it! How does one use this type of glaze without ruining kiln shelves? Using a catcher glaze is one answer.

Pages that reference this post in the Digitalfire Reference Library:

Lithium Carbonate, Spodumene, Sometimes it is better to replace the base in a production glaze recipe, Here is why Petalite and Spodumene will seldom substitute for Lithium Carbonate, GLC - Glaze Chemistry

This post is one of thousands found in the Digitalfire Reference Database. Most are part of a timeline maintained by Tony Hansen. You can search that timeline on the home page of digitalfire.com.