Electrolytic reduction of Pu

So it would be of interest to study the reduction of HHO3 under the conditions employed for the electrolytic reduction of Pu(IV) ... 

ELECTROLYTIC REDUCTION OF Pu(lY). Cohen(14) had studied systematically the electrolytic oxidation and reduction of Pu. His results showed that the overpotentials of Pu(IV)-Pu(lII) and Pu(YI)-Pu(V) couples are low, but it is high for Pu(V)-Pu(IY) on Pt electrode. Our experiments showed that the overpotential of Pu(IY)-Pu(llI) on Tl-electrode is also high. However, in the partitioning step of the first cycle in the purex process, the large excess of C present would be expected to be beneficial for the reduction of Pu(lV). 

Pu(IV) reduction rate were studied Pig.8 shows that at large excess of U and low concentration of Pu, no effect of acid concentration on Pu(IT) reduction rate could he observed. After a period of electrolysis of less than 30 seconds, nearly all of the Pu(IV) could be converted to Pu(III). This fact corresponds to the change of the potential of the electrolyte solution with time, which drops very rapidly after the start of the electrolysis. The effect of 0-concentration on the reduction rate of Pu(IV) is shown in Fig.9, from which it is clearly shown that the reduction rate of Pu(IT) depends very much on the amount of U relative to that of Pu in the electrolyte solution. The upper two curves showed that if the weight ratio of U/Pu is near or more than one, the reduction rate of Pu(IV) could be greatly accelerated. This fact indicates clearly that here U(IV) plays an important role in the reduction of Pu(IV). On the other hand, if the U-oontent in the solution is small compared to that of Pu, the rate of reduction of Pu(IV) is determined chiefly by the electrolytic reduction of Pu(IV) itself which is rather slow. This fact should be borne in mind in designing electrolytic reduction equipments in the purex process. 

---