In article , Paul F. Dietz wrote:
extraction of the uranium content of about a cubic kilometer of seawater
per *minute*. I'm not aware of any chemical process -- not even
purification of drinking water -- which has ever been done on anything
like that scale.

The chemical processing proper is done on the saturated adsorber.

No, that's the second stage of the chemical processing. The first stage
is running seawater through the adsorber. Just because that stage looks
simple and easy, doesn't mean that it *is* simple and easy... not when
you're trying to process cubic kilometers per minute.

has already been tested, in the ocean, and fouling was not a problem.

How do you know? It's not mentioned, that I've seen, but that doesn't
mean it wasn't a problem.

If you want to be concerned about fouling, worry about growth
of organisms on the support structure, not the adsorber itself
or its cages (if this was what you *were* worrying about, then
I agree it would need to be addressed.)

I'm concerned about all of the above. :-) They're all potentially
serious issues when trying to turn this from a lab-scale demo into a
large-scale production process.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |