Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology

Uranium deposits from an electrorefining process contain about 30% salt. In order to recover pure uranium and transform it into an ingot, the salts have to be removed from the uranium deposits. Major process variables for the salt distillation process of the uranium deposits are hold temperature and vacuum pressure. Effects of the variables on the salt removal efficiency were studied in the previous study[1]. By applying the Hertz-Langmuir relation to the salt evaporation of the uranium deposits, the evaporation coefficients were obtained at the various conditions. The operational conditions for achieving above 99% salt removal were deduced. The salt distilled uranium deposits tend to form the eutectic melt with iron, nickel, chromium for structural material of salt evaporator. In this study, we investigated the hold temperature limitation in order to prevent the formation of the eutetic melt between urnaium and other metals. The reactions between the uranium metal and stainless steel were tested at various conditions. And for enhancing the evaporation rate of the salt and the efficient recovery of the distilled salt, the thermal analysis of the salt distiller was conducted by using commercial CFX software. From the thermal analysis, the effect of Ar gas flow on the evaporation of the salt was studied.

Keywords

Uranium deposit,salt distillation,eutectic melt,thermal analysis,commercial CFX software,salt removal efficiency