3 ms·

Someone built a machine to do this for gold: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/sabgy/scientists_of_reddit_can_the_sullivan_generator/ https://www.red

• Turing_Machine 5y ago
  Sure, the "right conditions" being "cheaper than other sources". :-) There are a few things that we extract from seawater right now... common salt, obviously (though a lot of that is also mined), magnesium, bromine... It's definitely not a completely cockamamie idea, but I have no idea whether this particular process is enough cheaper than existing sources to make it worthwhile. They claim $5 USD/kg for electrical costs. Capital costs are unspecified. Looks like lithium metal goes for about $80-85/kg, so it seems promising, depending on what kind of capital investment is required.
• fake-name 5y ago
  Someone claims to have built a machine to do this. They're also claiming they *figured out how to derive energy from the rotation of the earth*. Which if it were real would be a major revolution in and of it self. Why not just sell that? Nope, they have to attach a gold extraction thing and desalinate seawater. They're obviously a quack.