Spotlight on American Rare Earths, page-2242

Clearly someone is a little wet between the ears this weekend!

The 2019 DOE article is about possible and conceptual research options for mining seawater for mainly uranium and hydrogen extraction. Not a list of DOE funded research conducted over past 5 years to replace terrestrial mining for REEs.

Further examination of article references, it become blatantly obvious the so-called seawater REE resource is the same deep-sea deposit in the Pacific Ocean which 21 countries as of Aug 2023 have agreed to a moratorium on seabed mining.

Yes, there are REE in the ocean and these metal-rich deposit can be found in the seabed of polymetalic nodules and the ferromanganese colloid crust. These minerals are located at depth of 800m to 2500m and down to 7500m within the Clarion and Clipperton Fracture Zones (CCZ), the Peru Basin, and Penrhyn-Samoa Basins. Good luck promoting this as an environmental option.

Some basic chemistry knowledge would be helpful to understand the lanthanides series metals form covalence metal ligand complexes that are not very soluble in water compared to ionic alkaline metals which would be the main waste products from a desalination process.