It is no secret that land resources of rare metals are being depleted at an alarming rate after multiple decades of aggressive mining.

This and also the heavy environmental toll associated with the land mining is causing the mining industry to turn towards the only remaining “untapped” mineral source: Sea Water Resources.

In this regard it is estimated that the world oceans contain an “untapped” reserve of over 5 x1016 tons of water soluble minerals (45 – 50 different metals, over 4.5 billion tons of Uranium alone).

Sea water mining is far more environmentally friendly compared to land mining as it does not require expensive mining operations associated with mineral ore extraction and benefication.

A predicted shortage of crucial elements for nuclear energy and/or electric battery production such as U, Li, Ni, Co etc. can be only mitigated by an increase in sea mining operations.

There is however one major disadvantage: seawater mining is an extremely energy intensive process, the energy being necessary for achieving mineral concentrations far higher than normal seawater salt content of 40-50 gr/Liter.

For this reason alone almost all seawater mining operations today are “coupled” with Desalination plant operations to a mutual advantage (high concentration brines being the primary product in seawater desalination). 

The chart below depicts the economical feasibility of elemental mining using current
desalination technology. 

Mikroen technology can considerably increase the number of economically feasible elements by overcoming the energy related “handicap” that affects negatively the conventional sea mining applications.

1. Mikroen’s portable, microwave enabled, solar supported Reverse Desalination modules, capable of operating solely on solar power, can generate super saline brines, whose salt concentration can be 4-5 times higher than ordinary sea water, reaching concentrations of over 200 gr/Liter). These modules containing high throughput, super heated reactors capable of achieving temperatures close to 1000°C will be able to process massive amounts of sea water at high speeds.

2. The most important implication of Mikroen’s Reverse Desalination technology is the “decoupling” of seawater mining from water desalination plants. Mikroen’s Reverse Desalination modules, featuring elegant engineering designs, have extremely low energy requirements. This technology allows for the development of economically viable “stand alone” sea mining operations along any coastal areas, where such developments are economically feasible.