Metal Ion Extraction

About

Summary Stanford researchers have developed a new technology to either extract valuable metal ion resources from sea water or remove hazardous ions from drinking water. This new method was tested using half-wave rectified alternating current (HW-ACE) to electrochemically extract uranium from sea water for nuclear fuel. This HW-ACE method can overcome the limitations from traditional physicochemical adsorption and simultaneously achieve 9x higher extraction capacity, 4x faster kinetics, and high selectivity.   Applications Valuable metal resource extraction from sea water such as uranium, vanadium, and copper Heavy metal ion removal such as cadmium, copper, lead, mercury, etc. from drinking water   Advantages High efficiency and capacity- Removes ions from water ~10x greater traditional physiochemical adsorption systems High selectivity/specificity to target specific ions Fast kinetics Tunable - Electrochemical potentials (bias) and frequency can be tuned to only deposit certain metal ions Flexible design - different types of electrode material can be used based on different applications Durable - Device designed to have increased resistance to damage compared to currently available systems Resistant- Can operate in a wide range of pH conditions without being compromised