Extracting Boron from seawater – technologies?

[NeilBrainstrong]

In this post I calculated how much energy would be available if the Boron contained in the oceans could be extracted. Thus, the question arises, how will we extract it? I know that there are well-established technologies to extract Deuterium, and in Japan scientists have demonstrated a device which can extract Uranium. But what about Boron? Are there already technologies available to extract it economically? Have these already been employed on an industrial scale?

[vansig]

Boron (as boric acid or borate ion) is a by-product of desalination and dietary-salt extraction from sea water, and is a well-known contaminant in fresh water wells. So you’ll be starting with a waste product, that is ordinarily regarded as a pollutant, and reversing the economics of dealing with its disposal.

Hypothetically, extraction could be achieved by reverse osmosis in two stages, during desalination: the first stage eliminates alkaline earth halides from the sea water, but passes dissolved boric acid; the pH is then adjusted with ammonia, and a second reverse osmosis passes the desalinated water. The waste from this second pass then has boosted levels of ammonium borate.

http://www.trusselltech.com/media/1.pdf
http://www.lenntech.com/periodic/water/boron/boron-and-water.htm

Yet, boron is not in short supply. “About 500,000 tons are produced per year for a price of about $700/ton.”

Also, boric acid may be purified by re-crystallization of saturated solutions;
solubility is 2.52 g/100 mL at 0 °C, but 27.53 g/100 mL at 100 °C.

Achieving isotopic purity is somewhat harder. Probably some process involving boron trifluoride is used.

If i recall correctly, presently, boron-10 (a.k.a. enriched boron) is used for neutron shielding; and boron-11 (a.k.a. depleted boron) for radiation-resistant microelectronics. Focus fusion wants the boron-11, in the form of the solid decaborane, B10H14, (or perhaps as the gas diborane, B2H6.)

[zapkitty]

vansig wrote: Boron (as boric acid or borate ion) is a by-product of desalination and dietary-salt extraction from sea water, and is a well-known contaminant in fresh water wells. So you’ll be starting with a waste product, that is ordinarily regarded as a pollutant, and reversing the economics of dealing with its disposal.

http://www.trusselltech.com/media/1.pdf
http://www.lenntech.com/periodic/water/boron/boron-and-water.htm

Yet, boron is not in short supply. “About 500,000 tons are produced per year for a price of about $700/ton.”

With current commercial reserves of over 10,000,000 tons…. i.e. that’s just what they’ve staked out [em]at the moment[/em].

As for the thread concept I, myself, find it pretty meaningless. The X megawatts for X persons for X aeons is too displaced and too subject to gaming.

A more relevant comparison will be

[em]”Can we, acting in an environmentally responsible manner and without shorting ourselves in its other uses, safely get enough boron to see us through until the next, longer lived, energy breakthrough?”[/em]

And the answer will be measured in MW per person per millennium.

I hereby call this number the Zap.

belated edit: current commercial reserves are held at 10 million tons, not 10 thousand 🙂

[Rezwan]

zapkitty wrote:
As for the thread concept I, myself, find it pretty meaningless. The X megawatts for X persons for X aeons is too displaced and too subject to gaming.
…

And the answer will be measured in MW per person per millennium.

I hereby call this number the Zap.

I like it! The Zap. Has an electric feel to it as well.

Now to get widespread use of the metric.

[Rezwan]

And it’s eponymous. Like the Sigalert.

[Brian H]

Rezwan wrote: And it’s eponymous. Like the Sigalert.

Is Eric fated to go down in history as The Zapster?
:ohh:

[KeithPickering]

Rezwan wrote:

As for the thread concept I, myself, find it pretty meaningless. The X megawatts for X persons for X aeons is too displaced and too subject to gaming.
…

And the answer will be measured in MW per person per millennium.

I hereby call this number the Zap.

I like it! The Zap. Has an electric feel to it as well.

Now to get widespread use of the metric.

Oh, if only you had been minding your units. Watts already has a time element in it (Joules per second). So should a Zap should really be one MJ per person per millenium? But that works out to a measly 3 x 10^-5 Watts per person!

So how about a Zap is 1 MW per person, period? Or a Zap is 1 megaWatt-millenium per person? The first being a unit of power, the second being a unit of energy.

[zapkitty]

KeithPickering wrote:

As for the thread concept I, myself, find it pretty meaningless. The X megawatts for X persons for X aeons is too displaced and too subject to gaming.
…

And the answer will be measured in MW per person per millennium.

I hereby call this number the Zap.

I like it! The Zap. Has an electric feel to it as well.

Now to get widespread use of the metric.

Oh, if only you had been minding your units. Watts already has a time element in it (Joules per second). So should a Zap should really be one MJ per person per millenium? But that works out to a measly 3 x 10^-5 Watts per person!

So how about a Zap is 1 MW per person, period? Or a Zap is 1 megaWatt-millenium per person? The first being a unit of power, the second being a unit of energy.

🙂

… more seriously, I was thinking that if we can’t safely set up a better and longer lived power source in any given thousand year period then there’s no hope for us at all.

We could double our population and go all-solar and still provide megawatts per person… if we could buy ourselves a few centuries to build the proper orbital infrastructure.

Of course the population could easily more than double in a century, much less a millennium, but leaving the projected population undefined gives too much slack in the concept for my taste so doubling the current population would seem to be a good marker.

So slightly rephrased:

“Can we, acting in an environmentally responsible manner, safely get enough energy from a given source without shorting ourselves in its other uses to see double the current population through until the next, longer lived, energy breakthrough?”

“environmentally responsible” and “safely” should have been factored in under “sustainable energy” but the thinking behind that concept is actually more tilted towards renewables at the moment and isn’t set up for aneutronic fusion yet… but it’s the closest to what we seek, I think.

And so, more formally. the Zap would measure how much energy a sustainable source can provide for double the current population, from birth until death, for 1000 years and it would be measured in megawatts.

… and an average of 1 MW per person would basically solve all current energy and material resource issues.

As an example in the U.S. an average of 1 MW each for the current population would mean a total available energy budget of 308 terawatts. We could get some things done then…

… that is, if the ruling plutocracy is not allowed to lock it down “for our own good.” And they will try. Having openly seized power they will not give it up willingly. After all, why should they?

[KeithPickering]

Got it. A Zap is 1 megawatt-person, for an assumed population of 14 billion. Or, 1 Zap = 14 billion megawatts = 14 million gigawatts = 14000 terawatts. Current worldwide energy usage = 16 terawatts.

[vansig]

1 MW per person would have some impact on heat dissipation.

to maintain temperature below about 50 C, users would have to dissipate
around 620 W/m^2, which implies a spherical surface 23 meters diameter… for each person, for a radiator.

[zapkitty]

KeithPickering wrote: Got it. A Zap is 1 megawatt-person, for an assumed population of 14 billion. Or, 1 Zap = 14 billion megawatts = 14 million gigawatts = 14000 terawatts. Current worldwide energy usage = 16 terawatts.

… for a thousand years.

A measurement of the energy reserves of a given source that should be somewhat more relevant to a discussion of whether it’s a source worth switching to than, say, measurements with vague parameters that give results in time frames longer than life has existed on Earth.

vansig wrote: 1 MW per person would have some impact on heat dissipation.

to maintain temperature below about 50 C, users would have to dissipate
around 620 W/m^2, which implies a spherical surface 23 meters diameter… for each person, for a radiator.

We’ve already got a big spherical radiator that handles inputs in the 122 petawatt range… the Earth. Even if we were actually using 14 petawatts additional (the zap is a measure of energy reserves, not a mandate for use) we’d just have to paint the roofs white.

The current heating problem is due to the pcrats insisting on painting everything black 🙂

[zapkitty]

In speaking of actual implementation of a new source such as boron fusion it will be important to emphasize two truths:

One truth is that the new source will be displacing current sources with a more efficient and less harmful source. This gives humanity some much-needed breathing room to handle oncoming climate-induced upheavals without condemning entire populations to death.

The other truth is that long before humanity starts using enough raw energy to make heating a global concern – we’re currently nowhere near that point and the problems so far have been the result of the chemistry of carbon-based fuels – long before the problem stage is reached we’ll have the resources needed and the time tneeded to implement a full solar power regime on Earth if we so desire.

This is the truth and should satisfy the greens.

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