Can Gold be Extracted from Seawater?
In the early portion of the 20th century, chemists hoped they could develop a process to recover pure gold from large quantities of seawater, making themselves and their countries rich. German chemist Fritz Haber, famous co-inventor of the Haber-Bosch process, spent a portion of his career attempting to extract gold from the sea to pay for Germany’s post-WWI debt. It is a fact that a typical cubic mile of seawater contains, on average, 1-2 parts per million (ppm) of gold. The problem lies in getting the gold separated from the water. A cubic mile (1.6 cubic km) of seawater is an almost unimaginable quantity from the human perspective. It would take decades for us to process it, considering the current capacities of our technology. From the perspective of chemists in the early 20th century, it must have seemed like an even larger quantity. Nevertheless, the lure of gold is great, and throughout history people have spent their lives trying to get it, whether through stealing it, transmut
In the early portion of the 20th century, chemists hoped they could develop a process to recover pure gold from large quantities of seawater, making themselves and their countries rich. German chemist Fritz Haber, famous co-inventor of the Haber-Bosch process, spent a portion of his career attempting to extract gold from the sea to pay for Germany’s post-WWI debt. It is a fact that a typical cubic mile of seawater contains, on average, 1-2 parts per million (ppm) of gold. The problem lies in getting the gold separated from the water. A cubic mile ([1.6 km]3) of seawater is an almost unimaginable quantity from the human perspective. It would take decades for us to process it, considering the current capacities of our technology. From the perspective of chemists in the early 20th century, it must have seemed like an even larger quantity. Nevertheless, the lure of gold is great, and throughout history people have spent their lives trying to get it, whether through stealing it, transmuting
In the early portion of the 20th century, chemists hoped they could develop a process to recover pure gold from large quantities of seawater, making themselves and their countries rich. German chemist Fritz Haber, famous co-inventor of the Haber-Bosch process, spent a portion of his career attempting to extract gold from the sea to pay for Germany’s post-WWI debt. It is a fact that a typical cubic mile of seawater contains, on average, 1-2 parts per million (ppm) of gold. The problem lies in getting the gold separated from the water. A cubic mile (1.6 cubic km) of seawater is an almost unimaginable quantity from the human perspective. It would take decades for us to process it, considering the current capacities of our technology. From the perspective of chemists in the early 20th century, it must have seemed like an even larger quantity. Nevertheless, the lure of gold is great, and throughout history people have spent their lives trying to get it, whether through stealing it, transm
