Indian scientists extract record uranium from seawater that could power nuclear plants

As the world faces the effects of climate change, and pressure mounts to reduce emissions from fossil fuel-based energy sources, countries are looking at newer ways to switch to renewable, including shifting existing technologies to non-polluting methods.

Nuclear power, mostly used in the production of electricity, is widely considered to be a renewable source of energy. However, the raw material that is used to generate nuclear power through a process called fission is non-renewable. Nuclear power plants need a specific form of uranium called Uranium-235. Uranium 235 is a depleting resource.

Uranium reserves found naturally are on a course to reach exhaustion within a century, which means that countries will have to look for alternatives to generate this critical element that powers nuclear plants across the world. The world at the moment has a uranium reserve of 7.5 million metric tons.

In an attempt to address this worry, a group of scientists at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, attempted to extract uranium from seawater. Their attempts were successful and the findings were published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

The team of researchers at IISER have developed a rare ionic macroporous metal-organic framework (MOF), which can effectively capture uranium. They managed to capture 96.3 per cent of uranium within two hours, which is in sharp contrast to the other existing adsorbent. A proper absorbent combining the features of high capacity, excellent selectivity, and ultra-fast kinetics has been a long challenge.

They collected seawater from the Arabian Sea (Juhu beach), Mumbai for uranium extraction and the absorbent resulted in a record uranium uptake capacity of 28.2 mg per gram in only 25 days and “satisfies the remarkable uranium extraction from seawater standard only in 2 days compared to existing adsorbents including commercially available materials reported so far.”