Study of factors affecting uranium stripping from DEHPA/TOPO solvent by factorial design

Uranium is recovered from wet phosphoric acid by a DEHPA/TOPO mixture. It was found that stripping is the most crucial step in this process. Several studies were undertaken to understand this process in greater depth. This study investigates the main operating variables, mainly concentration of phosphoric acid, temperature and concentration of iron on stripping, by the method of factorial design. A mathematical model was developed to represent the data. Another experiment was undertaken to find out the effect of fluoride ion on stripping. The results agree well with those of earlier investigations, namely that it is beneficial to increase the concentration of phosphoric acid and the temperature. The increase in fluoride ion concentration leads to an enhancement of the stripping distribution ratio. (author)