Recovery of uranium and vanadium from brine streams and oceans

Abstract

Research and technological developments are being pursued vigorously all over the globe to reduce the cost of desalinated water. One approach can be to retrofit 'value addition' by the recovery of uranium and vanadium from reject brine streams. Bench-scale field trials that have been carried out are presented in this paper. Coupling 'uranium recovery' with desalination plants for partly mitigating brine-related environmental issues is an added advantage. The paper describes developmental works since their inception in July 1999, including results from the 100 gpy plant commissioned at Trombay in May 2006.