WEN Liping and colleagues at the CAS Institute of Physical and Chemical Technology have developed a bionic graded porous adsorbent membrane based on an intrinsic microporous polymer. The decreasing pore size structure allows uranyl ions to diffuse rapidly in the membrane, and tests have shown that the graded porous membrane can increase the adsorption capacity up to 20 times.

The amount of uranium in seawater is estimated at over 4 billion t, 1,000 times the amount of uranium reserves on land, but concentration in seawater is only ~3.3 ppb.

CAS news release, December 6, 2021