Extracting Minerals from Seawater: An Energy Analysis
Dipartimento di Chimica, Università di Firenze, Polo scientifico di Sesto Fiorentino, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino (Fi), Italy
Sustainability 2010, 2(4), 980-992; https://doi.org/10.3390/su2040980
Received: 10 February 2010 / Revised: 23 March 2010 / Accepted: 29 March 2010 / Published: 9 April 2010
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Net Gains from Depleting Fossil Energy and Mineral Sources)
The concept of recovering minerals from seawater has been proposed as a way of counteracting the gradual depletion of conventional mineral ores. Seawater contains large amounts of dissolved ions and the four most concentrated metal ones (Na, Mg, Ca, K) are being commercially extracted today. However, all the other metal ions exist at much lower concentrations. This paper reports an estimate of the feasibility of the extraction of these metal ions on the basis of the energy needed. In most cases, the result is that extraction in amounts comparable to the present production from land mines would be impossible because of the very large amount of energy needed. This conclusion holds also for uranium as fuel for the present generation of nuclear fission plants. Nevertheless, in a few cases, mainly lithium, extraction from seawater could provide amounts of metals sufficient for closing the cycle of metal use in the economy, provided that an increased level of recycling can be attained.
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Keywords:
mineral extraction; uranium supply; lithium supply; copper supply; nuclear fission; nuclear fusion
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License
MDPI and ACS Style
Bardi, U. Extracting Minerals from Seawater: An Energy Analysis. Sustainability 2010, 2, 980-992. https://doi.org/10.3390/su2040980
AMA Style
Bardi U. Extracting Minerals from Seawater: An Energy Analysis. Sustainability. 2010; 2(4):980-992. https://doi.org/10.3390/su2040980
Chicago/Turabian StyleBardi, Ugo. 2010. "Extracting Minerals from Seawater: An Energy Analysis" Sustainability 2, no. 4: 980-992. https://doi.org/10.3390/su2040980
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