Chinese scientists have developed a revolutionary method to extract nuclear fuel directly from the ocean using candle wax.
Physicists from China have made a breakthrough in nuclear energy. They have developed a new method to extract uranium from seawater using candle wax.
This method could revolutionize nuclear energy by creating a virtually unlimited source of fuel. The study was published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, writes Interesting technology.
Currently, nuclear power plants use uranium to generate electricity. Scientists have calculated that the uranium reserves in the bowels of the Earth are approximately 7.6 million tons.
This means that this source of nuclear fuel will last approximately 100 years. At the same time, calculations show that Earth’s oceans contain about 4.5 billion tons of uranium.
Such a huge supply of nuclear fuel could supply the entire world with nuclear energy for thousands of years.
But extracting uranium from seawater is very difficult. Uranium is present in very low concentrations in the ocean, making it difficult to extract. Now Chinese physicists have developed a new, efficient and cost-effective method to extract uranium from seawater.
To do this, the scientists created special beads with a high absorption coefficient. This material is made from a dissolved polymer called polyamidoxime (it attracts metals in water) and melted candle wax.
After cooling and removing the wax, the remaining material was ground into porous hydrogel particles. These particles were then encapsulated in alginate-polyacrylic acid, resulting in beads with a diameter of 3 mm.
The physicists tested their balls in both real and simulated sea conditions and achieved good results. Over 15 days, 10 liters of plain seawater yielded 4.79 milligrams of uranium per gram of balls. In simulated seawater, this figure rose to 8.23 milligrams of uranium per gram of balls.
Further experiments showed that the beads could extract uranium from seawater with efficiency ranging from 95.9% to 99.5%.
A new method of extracting uranium from seawater using cheap materials suggests the technology could provide humanity on an industrial scale with the vast quantities of nuclear fuel needed to generate electricity from nuclear power stations.
Although nuclear power plants are not entirely clean sources of energy because of the waste they create, they are still better than fossil fuels, which contribute to global warming.
Thermonuclear energy can be considered truly clean energy, its creation requires the same process that allows the sun to live. But so far physicists have not been able to obtain thermonuclear energy and it is not yet known when it will be produced on a large scale.
