Salt Stripping: A Pyrochemical Approach to the Recovery of Plutonium Electrorefining Salt Residues
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
A pyrochemical process has been developed to take the salt residue from the plutonium electrorefining process and strip the plutonium from it. The process, called salt stripping, uses calcium as a reducing/coalescing agent. In a one-day operation, greater than 95% of the plutonium can be recovered as a metallic button. As much as 88% of the residue is either reused as metal or discarded as a clean salt. A thin layer of black salts, which makes up the bulk of the unrecovered Pu, is a by-product of the initial reductions. A number of black salts can be collected together and re-reduced in a second step. Greater than 88% of this plutonium can be successfully recovered in this second stage with the resulting residues being discardable. The processing time, number of processor hours, and the volume of secondary residues are greatly reduced over the classical aqueous recovery methods. In addition, the product metal is of sufficient quality to be fed directly to the electrorefining process for purification. 8 figures, 7 tables.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-36
- OSTI ID:
- 6671287
- Report Number(s):
- LA--9464-MS; ON: DE83002914
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
ACTINIDES
ALKALINE EARTH METALS
CALCIUM
CHEMICAL REACTIONS
ELECTROLYSIS
ELECTROREFINING
ELEMENTS
LYSIS
METALS
PLUTONIUM
PROCESSING
RECOVERY
REDUCTION
REFINING
RESIDUES
SALTS
TRANSURANIUM ELEMENTS