title: Mining Critical Metals and Elements from Seawater: Opportunities and Challenges.
abstract: The availability and sustainable supply of technology metals and valuable elements is critical to the global economy. There is a growing realization that the development and deployment of the clean energy technologies and sustainable products and manufacturing industries of the 21st century will require large amounts of critical metals and valuable elements including rare-earth elements (REEs), platinum group metals (PGMs), lithium, copper, cobalt, silver, and gold. Advances in industrial ecology, water purification, and resource recovery have established that seawater is an important and largely untapped source of technology metals and valuable elements. This feature article discusses the opportunities and challenges of mining critical metals and elements from seawater. We highlight recent advances and provide an outlook of the future of metal mining and resource recovery from seawater.
authors.affiliation: †Graduate School of EEWS (Energy, Environment, Water and Sustainability), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, South Korea.|‡Environmental Science and Engineering, Division of Engineering and Applied Science, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, United States.
authors.forename: Mamadou S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Diallo
authors.affiliation: †Graduate School of EEWS (Energy, Environment, Water and Sustainability), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, South Korea.
authors.forename: Madhusudhana Rao
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Kotte
authors.affiliation: †Graduate School of EEWS (Energy, Environment, Water and Sustainability), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, South Korea.
authors.forename: Manki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cho
mesh_terms: D004602:Elements; D008024:Ligands; D008670:Metals / Q000032:analysis*; D008906:Mining; D012623:Seawater / Q000737:chemistry*; D012996:Solutions
chemical_list: D004602:Elements; D008024:Ligands; D008670:Metals; D012996:Solutions