Ocean miner: A technology for gathering valuable trace elements or removing undesirable trace contaminants

The ocean contains most of the more valuable elements, although in amounts sufficiently dilute that no practical means of commercial extraction and concentration has been known.

Until now.

The needed energy associated with the concentrating of a dilute solution is in theory very little; the required energy should cost only pennies for even the most dilute element-of-interest. So, the barrier has not-so-much been that it was impractical but rather that no one could see how to do it as easily as Mother Nature allowed.

The technology of Ocean Miner was developed to address this need. After several annual iterations of field trials, the latest test gave concentration factors over that of the open ocean for these representative elements:

Element (As the oxide) Measured Natural Concentration factor Chromium 300 PPM 300 PPB 1000 X Manganese 230 PPM 200 PPB 1150 X Nickel 130 PPM 560 PPB 430 X Gallium 30 PPM 30 PPB 1000X Strontium 10,600 PPM 7.9 PPM about 1300X; known ore body nearby Lutetium 970 PPM 0.15 PPT about 8,000,000,000 X Indicates very rich hitherto unknown ore body nearby

Currently, there is no known lower limit to the dilution from which elements can be recovered with this new Ocean Mining technology, as the captured binding strength exceeds measurement capabilities for the disassociation equilibria. Core applications include commercial element extraction directly from sea-water or desalinaton brine and oceanic/river prospecting for mineral deposits. Additional applications may include Rare-Earth extraction from coal and other land-based sources without the onerous physical and permitting processes of conventional land-based mining.

There is well-known uranium in seawater, but largely in the Atlantic. My Ocean Miner tests over the last three years were done in the Pacific northwest, and captured elements-of-interest in that location.

Early benchtop tests in 2006-7 confirmed that it was highly effective for capturing Uranium, as its original purpose was decontamination of the Plutonium and Americium at the Nuclear Test Site in southern Nevada.

Development-partners are sought, to support further commercialization work which may include a field test in the Atlantic, to verify the viability of securing oceanic uranium as a long-term supply-chain asset.

Further commercialization work may also include oceanic rare-earth extraction offshore from known rare earth placer deposits, rare-earth extraction from power plant fly-ash, residual arsenic removal from water to render it potable, metal-contaminant removal from industrial aqueous process-streams, rare earth and heavy-element (tungsten, molybdenum, etc.) concentration from bulk ore and other similar applications.