Chinese team extracts uranium from seawater at eight times the US target rate

Chinese researchers say they have extracted uranium from seawater at more than eight times the target rate set by the US Department of Energy, advancing a competition to tap seawater as a source of nuclear fuel.

The team, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, developed a material called PhosCage. Its sponge-like molecular structure contains phosphate groups that act as chemical traps for uranium.

In tests using natural seawater samples, the material recovered as much as 50.4 milligrams of uranium for every gram of adsorbent. The US Department of Energy target is 6 milligrams per gram. The researchers also made millimetre-sized PhosCage beads, which are easier to deploy and retrieve in the open ocean. The beads captured 22.55 milligrams per gram and continued working through seven cycles of reuse.

The team said the research “opens up a novel approach to extracting uranium from seawater and lays the groundwork for adsorbents that can capture more uranium and eventually be used on a large scale.” The technology could be important for China as it expands nuclear power. China has sizeable uranium reserves but consumes more uranium than it produces.

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This work opens up a novel approach to extracting uranium from seawater and lays the groundwork for adsorbents that can capture more uranium and eventually be used on a large scale.