Study the influence of process variables on the efficiency of uranium extraction [articol]

Abstract

This paper presents a study on the statistical modelling of the results obtained at uranium purification by liquid-liquid extraction. The main purpose of this work consists of establishing a optimal domain for process variables (content of uranium in aqueous phase, the acidity of the aqueous phase, the aqueous: organic phase’s ratio (A:O), the TBP concentration in kerosene, number of the extraction steps etc.), in order to obtain a maximum yield of extraction. To study the influence of process variables on the uranium extraction efficiency we used the method of planning experiments, that allows to obtain completely information and significant enough in a small number of experiments. At the same time, by this method are obtained mathematical relationships and data processing for complete characterization of the statistical model. The general effect of the optimization consists in the decreasing of the uranium technological losses (by avoiding the third phase formation) and, as a result it is obtained the increasing of the process efficiency up to 5%.