Uranium recovery from hydrochloric acid

The recovery of uranium from hydrochloric acid solutions and its concentration are described in [43]. In this operation, 10 M HCl solution containing uranium traces is treated with strongly basic anion exchanger. Upon washing the ion exchanger with water the effluent of uranyl chloride at a concentration level as large as 200 g/L uranium is obtained. 

Since uranium is present in sea water in such low concentrations as 3.2 pig/1, adsorption recovery could become a feasible method of extraction and concentration for further utilization. Amidoxime resin is one of the promising adsorbents for this purpose and in fact after contact with sea water for more than one hundred days the resin can accumulate several hundred mg/1 of uranium in the bed. The resin also adsorbs alkaline earth metals such as calcium and magnesium, which must first be removed by a weak acid solution. Desorption of uranium by hydrochloric acid solutions of different concentrations and the resultant equilibrium relations are shown in Fig. 9.5. From this result, hydrochloric acid of one molc/1 was selected as an eluant. Acid elution and uranium desorption are solved simultaneously by a similar set of... 

El-Reefy, S.A., Selim, Y.T. Aly, H.F. (1998) Recovery of uranium from thorium in hydrochloric acid medium by liquid emulsion membranes containing trioctylphosphine oxide. Journal of Radioanalytical... 

Other deviations from a simple elution process can also be beneficial. For example, recovery of eluate is generally a practical proposition, i.e. the uranium is precipitated from sodium chloride solution by the addition of sodium hydroxide, or from ammonium nitrate solution by the addition of ammonia. After filtration of the yellow sodium di-uranate or ammonium di-uranate, the filtrates can be reconstituted as an eluting agent by the addition of hydrochloric or nitric acid respectively. 

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