Done with a bit of reading from the “Tales from the White Hart” would seem to be appropriate.
Hear, hear!
.
(And Good Night!)
Clarke begins the story by pointing out that a cubic mile of sea water contains millions of tons of dissolved minerals - how best to get at them, when there are only about fifty pounds of gold per cubic mile?
I put some of my young men to work and they have made what we call a 'molecular sieve.' ... It depends on very advanced wave-mechanical theories for its operation, but what it actually does is absurdly simple. We can choose any component of sea water we like, and get the sieve to take it out. With several units, working in series, we can take out one element after another. The efficiency's quite high, and the power consumption negligible."This device comes from the short story The Man Who Ploughed The Sea, which was published in 1957 with the publication of Clarke's third collection of short stories Tales From The White Hart."
From Tales from the White Hart, by Arthur C. Clarke.
Published by Ballantine Books in 1957
The astute follower of the Undead Thread will recognize this concept. We fueled our Gas-Cooled-Nuclear-Reactor/Rocket Engines with Uranium gleaned from the ocean currents in preparation to go into space, using equipment designed around this principle.