Electrorefining salt recycle

Molten Salt Extraction and Electrorefining Salt Recycle. 

When the actinide products are removed from electrorefiners, the electrorefiner salts cover the metal. The cathodes are processed to distill adhering salt and to consolidate the actinide metals. These salts are recycled to the electrorefiner for further use (Westphal and Mariani, 2000 Westphal et al., 2002). In the case of the liquid cadmium cathode, the cadmium is... 

Spent anode residues from electrorefining (which contain approximately 20-30 percent of the plutonium fed to the process) are either recycled back to electrorefining, or, if high enough in impurities, are oxidized and sent to oxide dissolution. The spent salt is sent to aqueous dissolution (see Figure 1). 

Recent studies on the electrochemical behavior of plutonium in molten salts have mainly been performed in LiCl— KCl based melts. The electrorefining step in a pyroprocessing procedure for the recycling of nuclear fuel from the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) Program has been... 

Recycling of refractory metals from wastes is an important issue today since they are in relatively low amount in the earth s crust and it should really be a substantial economy of expensive raw materials and also of energy. Molten salt electrolysis is proved to be appropriate to this function which can be assimilated in the case of metallic wastes to electrorefining. Today, waste treatment of other transition metals like actinides or lanthanides is a reality in the nuclear field, while other strategic elements such as silicon are expected to be recovered with a molten salt technology. 

A chemical plant uses starting materials that are not very pure—chlorine is produced from the crude sea salt metals are produced from ores. Dealing with impurities is another problem for the chemical engineer. Sometimes, as in electrowinning, extensive purification has to be carried out before electrolysis. In other cases, such as electrorefining, electrolysis takes care of impurities and dealing with these is really a problem of waste disposal or recycling of useful material. 

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