The cost of recovering uranium from seawater by a braided polymer adsorbent system

Science and Global Security

Volumn 21, Issue 2, 2013, Pages 134-163

  Schneider, Erich ^a   Sachde, Darshan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADSORBENT PRODUCTION; ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY; CAPACITY DEGRADATION; CONFIDENCE INTERVAL; DISCOUNTED CASH FLOW; ECONOMIES OF SCALE; PROPAGATION OF UNCERTAINTIES; SENSITIVITY STUDIES;

ADSORBENTS; COST ESTIMATING; NUCLEAR ENERGY; SEAWATER; UNCERTAINTY ANALYSIS; URANIUM;

COST ENGINEERING;

EID: 84879644856     PISSN: 08929882     EISSN: 15477800     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/08929882.2013.798993     Document Type: Article

References (28)

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4. Schneider, Erich A., and Darshan J. Sachde, "Review of JAEA Cost Analysis of Braid Adsorbent System for Recovery of Uranium from Seawater," Austin: The University of Texas at Austin; United States Department of Energy, 2011.
5. Two mechanisms might limit the transport of uranium from the seawater to the adsorbent. Diffusion of uranium anions into the polymer via its pore network makes available additional sites at the surface and allows more uranium to be adsorbed. Chemically grafting hydrophilic functional groups to the polymer facilitates this in-traparticle diffusion rate. The second potential limiting mechanism is mass transfer from the liquid phase to the adsorbent itself. If the adsorption is ultimately limited by uranium mass transfer from the bulk seawater, it would be reasonable to expect that the adsorption capacity would show a strong correlation with the local water velocity. Faster-flowing water would increase the local mass transfer coefficient and sustain the local uranium concentration gradient between the bulk water and the surface film.
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7. Measurements taken for braid-type adsorbents under controlled seawater flow rate conditions have indicated that diffusion is the limiting mechanism. In these experiments, no correlation was seen between bulk flow rate and uranium adsorption at flow velocities extending down to 0.3 cm/sec. The dimensionless mass transfer Biot number, Bi, measures the relative strength of the diffusive and film mass transfer mechanisms. For cylindrical fibers, mass transfer is considered limiting if Bi is less than one and diffusion is Bi is greater than 200. The measurements were used to derive an empirical estimate of Bi on the order of 105-106. C.
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9. Therefore, even though drag effects associated with large adsorbent field might reduce the bulk velocity of the seawater inside the field, the performance of the field will evidently be unaffected.
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26. The unit production cost of the adsorbent (includes material, O&M, and capital costs) is calculated at $5.36/ kg adsorbent. Exotic adsorbent materials with significantly higher fabrication costs would only be competitive if their capacity exceeded that of the amidoxime adsorbent by a similarly dramatic margin.
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