Fission product interactions with nitrogen donor ligands used for spent nuclear fuel treatment
Journal article, 2013

The so called BTBP (bis-triazine bi-pyridine)-type molecules have been developed for liquid-liquid extraction in the advanced reprocessing of used nuclear fuel. One solvent composition that has proven to be promising for such an application is the combination of CyMe4-BTBP and tri-butyl phosphate (TBP) in cyclohexanone. This solvent can extract the actinides successfully but unfortunately some fission products are also co-extracted. One of the most problematic fission products is palladium, but silver and cadmium are also extracted by the proposed solvent, which has been investigated here. In this study it was found that CyMe4-BTBP in cyclohexanone, when extracting palladium from nitric acid, forms complexes that are soluble both in the organic and aqueous phase. The predominant complex observed in both phases established with mass spectrometry and confirmed by NMR is a 1:1 complex, contrary to silver that forms 2:2 complexes and cadmium that forms 1:2 complexes. The nitrate dependency of the palladium extraction from nitric acid into a BTBP containing organic phase was found to be two. However, with higher ionic strengths, such as under process conditions, the palladium was found to be salted out into the organic phase.

crystal-structures

ionization

extraction

quadridentate

Water solubility

cambridge structural database

americium(iii)

Complexation

complexes

strong electrolytes

separation

BTBP

spectroscopy

Palladium

Author

Emma Aneheim

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Nuclear Chemistry

B. Gruner

Institute of Inorganic Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, v.v.i.

Christian Ekberg

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Nuclear Chemistry

Mark Foreman

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Nuclear Chemistry

Z. Hajkova

Institute of Inorganic Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, v.v.i.

Elin Löfström Engdahl

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Nuclear Chemistry

M. Drew

University of Reading

M. J. Hudson

University of Reading

Polyhedron

0277-5387 (ISSN)

Vol. 50 1 154-163

Subject Categories

Chemical Sciences

DOI

10.1016/j.poly.2012.10.030

More information

Latest update

5/23/2018