Method and equipment to extract dissolved, suspended or chemically bonded substances from a liquid

The method invented is especially for the recovery of uranium or other heavy metals too from seawater. The slight concentration of uranium in seawater sofar has not been worthwhile for a large technical recovery, especially as the hitherto known or proposed methods are mostly of an adsorption nature and the necessary equipment due to considerable disadvantages (such as e.g. too high a flow resistance with solid adsorber beds; too great an abrasion due to uncontrolled whirling motion of the adsorber particles; only discontinuous operation possible etc.) cannont be economically justified. In the method described here, a vertical upward flow through the adsorber bed is stabilized and made uniform before entering the bed by a special device (grid, sieve or holed plate) with about half the flow resistance compared to the adsorber bed, and is then slowed down uniformly by the enlarged cross-section like a diffusor. The adsorber particles are distributed uniformly over the flow cross-section kept in suspension for as long as the essential influencing parameters (weight, particle shape, flow rate etc.) experience no change. The gradual charging of the adsorber particles with heavy metal taken up from the solution and the thus involved gain in weight and the simultaneously increasing relative sinking rate cause a slow passage of the particles from the inlet to the outlet. Entrance and removal may go on continuously. (RB)