Electrochemical methods increase the uranium extraction capacity of seawater by 8 times

Professor Cui Wei from Stanford University on the 22nd said in an interview with a reporter from the Science and Technology Daily that the team recently developed an electrochemical method based on half-wave rectification of alternating current, which can efficiently extract uranium from seawater, compared to traditional physical and chemical adsorption methods. The extraction capacity increased by 8 times and the speed increased by 3 times. Related results were published in the latest British "Natural Energy" magazine.

At present, the reserves of uranium in seawater are about 4.5 billion tons, which is 2,000 times that of proven uranium reserves on land. If all the uranium in seawater can be extracted for nuclear power stations, the amount of generated electricity will be enough for the world to spend 10,000 yuan. year.

Cui Wei told reporters that the commonly used uranium extracted from seawater is physical and chemical adsorption. Due to the limited surface area of ​​adsorbent materials, and the low concentration of uranium in seawater and high salinity, the adsorption capacity of materials used for adsorbing uranium ions quickly saturates, and it is not possible to efficiently extract enough uranium. The cost of extracting uranium is also higher than that of terrestrial uranium. The refining costs are much higher.

The first author of the paper and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University, Liu Ye, said that the team developed this electrochemical method based on half-wave rectified alternating current (HW-ACE) that will have strong selectivity and adsorption for uranium. The amidoxime material is loaded onto a conductive substrate, and after conduction, an electric field causes uranium ions to migrate to the electrode and induce the electrodeposition of uranium compounds to form an electrically neutral uranium compound. Unlike traditional methods, electrodeposition is not limited to the size of the adsorbed surface area, for which the uranium extraction capacity can be greatly increased. Alternating pulse voltages prevent other cations from blocking the active site and avoid the occurrence of water lysis.

Cui Wei said that because of the large capacity of uranium extracted by this method, theoretically the extraction capacity is very strong. With the reduction of power consumption in the future extraction process, the extraction cost is expected to be lower than the existing seawater uranium extraction technology, which is equal to or even lower than the extraction cost of terrestrial uranium ore. (Reporter Jiang Jing)

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