Experimental study of uranium extraction from acidic wastage, functional comparison of two TOA and D2EHPA solutions

Uranium is the most important material in the nuclear fuel cycle that produces in the various stages of uranium production and processing research and after-use in reactors, as well as laboratory researches as uranium wastage. The uranium in these wastages is valuable and may cause radiation problems if they enter the environment, so their separation is essential. The solvent extraction method is one of the most important separation methods in the nuclear industry that produced uranium components from wastages is recovered using this method in the current study. After identifying the presented components in the wastage, the amount of each component was determined by using Inductively Coupled Spectrometry (ICP) analysis and finally the type of present uranium compound in the wastage was specified. According to the desired compound, the extraction experiments were performed with two different solvents of trioctylamine (TOA) and di-2-ethylhexyl phosphoric acid (D2EHPA) which the extraction percentages were achieved 96.12% and 99.01%, respectively. Also, the effects of extractant type, extraction temperature, acid concentration, extractant concentration, initial uranium concentration, diluent type, aqueous to organic phase ratio, phase mixing time on extraction percentage as well as the effect of various rinses on the reverse process were investigated.