Bipolar Uranium Extraction from Seawater with Ultra-Low Cell Voltage
1 min read
Summary
China has made advances in being able to extract uranium from seawater, which contains a thousand times more uranium than can be mined currently.
A team at Tsinghua University used an electrochemical method that requires a cell voltage of 0.6 V and claims to be able to recover uranium for $83 a kilogram, below the current market price.
The process can also prevent copper pollution and has so far extracted uranium at a rate of 100% from a solution of 20 ppm, compared to 9.1% with existing adsorption methods.
Further optimisation could mean the process can be used at uranium mining facilities and for reclaiming uranium from the cooling water at nuclear power plants, which is currently dumped into rivers.
