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elements from seawater with Hf nuclear isomer

178Hf is a nuclear isomer that makes giant amounts of energy like 1 microgram releases 700 Grams of TNT Use organisms to concentrate this isotope then activate the isomer using that energy to gather elements among them Hafnium from seawater
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Minerals from ocean water is a valued technology Elements thirty times cheaper than from ore reduction create a huge range of cheaper products benefitting almost all humans

Hafnium 178 is a nuclear isomer there is a New Scientist article about the energy it produces wikipedia writes

The nuclear isomer 178m2Hf is also a source of cascades of gamma rays whose energies total 2.45 MeV per decay.[23] It is notable because it has the highest excitation energy of any comparably long-lived isomer of any element. One gram of this pure isotope could release approximately 1330 megajoules of energy, the equivalent of exploding about 317 kilograms (700 pounds) of TNT. Possible applications requiring such highly concentrated energy storage are of interest.

Microrganisms as well as yeast as well as macroscopic vegetation are published (link) as concentrating isotopes differently at different tissues Nitrogen appears to be more than 4 times concentratable this way Thus we describe a way to breed Hf178 concentrating microorganisms

Grow bacteria like thiobacillus that concentrate hafnium

then using a courduroy transfer pad make a transfer impression onto a couple more plates; grow bacteria

Use an courduroy transfer pad made from electrically conductive plastic to get a transfer image of the bacterial plate Then dry this out

place the electrically conductive pad as the electrode of a vacuum tube It will emit light with charge just like an emission spectra tube emission spectra are isotopically particular

Use a laser on the bacterial pad emission tube to ablate a tiny area of the surface with a travelling dot use a spectrometer to note the emissions spectra When the spectrometer sees higher concentrations of Hf178 you have a reference point on the plate to create a fresh living culture of isotpe purifying bacteria from one of the living culture plates

repeat until you have a bacteria adequate at concentrating hf178

Now that you have the bacteria or kelp that concentrates the nuclear isomer you grow it at the ocean

The published Nitrogen version is more than four times effective at concentrating isotopes thus if you refeed the material back to the bacteria at mere doubling you get .03 then .06 .12 .24 .5 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 parts per hundred enriched Hf178 element

You then activate the hf178 with a mild amount of medical dose x rays to produce warmth this warmth is used to crystallize out salt on repeated cycling you get a fluid that has dozens or hundreds of times the mineral concentration of seawater with minimal salt

I like the idea of using a nernst battery (link) to then do electroplating out of different minerals at slightly different charges The nernst battery uses differences of ion concentrate with the same ion to produce electricity different voltages will prefentially plate different metals

all of the energy comes from the dissolved ocean minerals plus the side products are fresh water plus radioactivity Oceanic background radioactivity is much higher than that produced from the naturally spread Hf daughter products

beanangel, Jan 12 2009

Fractionation of nitrogen isotopes by mixed ruminal bacteria http://jas.fass.org...t/abstract/73/1/257
The amount of bacterial N was highest at 24 h of incubation when cellulose was the carbohydrate source. At that time, delta 15N between ammonia and bacteria was 8.9/1000 when ammonia was the N source, but delta 15N between non-ammonia and bacteria was 1.7/1000 [beanangel, Jan 12 2009]

Hafnium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafnium
[beanangel, Jan 12 2009]

Nernst battery nernst_20bees
[beanangel, Jan 12 2009]

GMO Ocean Mineral Harvest GMO_20Ocean_20Mineral_20Harvest
same concept, but giving the bacteria a leg up with gmo. [bungston, Jan 12 2009]


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Annotation:







       One of my earliest forays in the HB concerned such a scheme, linked. Look - I did not know what MFD meant!   

       In any case I like the spectral analysis component of this. Pretty slick, and automatable.   

       With the additional, burdensome wisdom of the years that have elapsed since 2002, I think an antibody might not be the ideal place to start. Rather find a molecule which chelates an ion similar to the one you want, engineer it into your bugs, and then do mutational riffs on it using this spectral analysis scheme. Maybe a vanadium chelator molecule would work as a starting point for the Hf product.
bungston, Jan 12 2009
  

       You're still not going to be able to select for isotopic specificity. In fact, it's going to be hard enough to make it discriminate Hafnium from several other metals.   

       (Side note: if you do get "64 parts per hundred" of Hafnium, I want to see those mothers).
MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 12 2009
  

       /You're still not going to be able to select for isotopic specificity./   

       Au contraire, mon frere! Consider the gentle chloroplast. C3 and C4 photosynthesis have different affinities for carbon13 vs 14. If a biological systemic like photosythesis can preferentially enrich for one isotope, so could this scheme.   

       That said, once you have produced a gleaming nugget of pure hafnium it would probably not be so much more trouble to seperate out the good stuff.
bungston, Jan 12 2009
  

       Yes, true but, as per my earlier annotation, the percentage mass difference between Hafnium isotopes is much less than that between isotopes of light elements. Also, the examples of enrichment quoted depend on cascades or cycles of metabolism. So, it wouldn't be enough to simply bind hafnium; you'd have to do things with it so that the isotopes had very slightly different reaction rates. This is going to be tricky.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 12 2009
  

       to reply I translate [MB] slightly if you have urged me not to edit then republish let me know   

       [MB] writes MaxCo translation department has walked out pending a pay review, so I'm having to tackle this one myself.   

       Are you (translates as: giving us the idea to) use directed evolution to create isotope-selective, Hafnium concentrating bacteria? Two notes of caution:   

       1) lots of people have (thought about or worked at) creating bacteria, algae etc to concentrate rare elements (eg gold) from seawater; I'm not sure why not much has come from it.   

       actually there is much happening here I have read about bacterial sulfur reducing bacteria being commercially used to concentrate ores   

       (2) I think you'll struggle with isotopic enrichment. In the case of nitrogen, you have something like a 7% mass difference between isotopes, which affects kinetics and therefore accumulation. In the case of hafnium it's going to be something like a 0.5% mass difference.   

       Also, to get any mass-based fractionation, you're going to have to bounce hafnium through a whole cascade of metabolic reactions; I just don't think you're going to be able to do this.   

       Apologies for the brevity of this annotation, but I could only comment on the bits written in English.   

       creating bacteria, algae etc to concentrate rare elements (eg gold) from seawater; I'm not sure why not much has come from it.   

       (2) I think you'll struggle with isotopic enrichment. In the case of nitrogen, you have something like a 7% mass difference between isotopes, which affects kinetics and therefore accumulation. In the case of hafnium it's going to be something like a 0.5% mass difference.   

       Also, to get any mass-based fractionation, you're going to have to bounce hafnium through a whole cascade of metabolic reactions; I just don't think you're going to be able to do this.   

       Apologies for the brevity of this annotation, but I could only comment on the bits written in English.   

       — MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 12 2009   

         

       well I'm only looking at enrichment to make the evaporative process work 1 g of 178Hf is 700 tons of TNT thus a mere milligram per Kg of bacteria is 700 kilograms of TNT thats a lot of energy   

       a microgram of Hf178 is like 700 grams of TNT which sounds at least plausible as a process energy source   

       to release the energy to make warm water I might go with something like the photon topedo which is basically a big array of 100 mw sticky tape x ray emitters   

       a microgram per Kg of bacteria looks like it will make the process functional
beanangel, Jan 14 2009
  

       Uh, yeah, as I understand it, the isomer version of Hf is more of an energy storage medium rather than an original source. All of the applications I've read about speak of using the different isomers of Hf as something akin to a batterty, ie can, in terms of energy density, store an incredible ammount. Given the 31 year halflife, just how much "activated" 178HFm2 are we expeciting to find?
Custardguts, Jan 15 2009
  


 

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