Recovery system for uranium from seawater with fibrous adsorbent and its preliminary cost estimation

The cost of uranium recovered from seawater was estimated to extract the te chnical problems in the practical application of the fibrous amidoxime adso rbent synthesized by radiation graftpolymerization. Each cost of the adsorb ent production, the dipping in seawater for uranium absorption, and the ura nium elution from the adsorbent was estimated in three different mooring sy stems of a buoy, floating body, and chain binding system. The recovery cost was estimated to be 5 similar to 10 times of that from mining uranium. Mor e than 80% of the total cost was occupied by the cost for marine equipment for mooring the adsorbents in seawater, which is owing to a weight of metal cage for adsorbents. Thus, the cost can be reduced to half by the reductio n of the equipment weight to 1/4. The improvement of adsorbent ability is r esearch subjects in the future also, since the cost directly depends on the adsorbent performance.