Separation of uranium and ruthenium mixture by liquid surfactant membrane extraction using span 80 and DI-(2-ethyl hexyl) phosphoric acid

Separation of uranium and ruthenium mixture in a nitric acid solution using liquid surfactant membrane consisting of the Span 80 as surfactant, mixture of di-(2-ethyl hexyl) phosphoric acid (D2EHPA) in kerosene as extractant and phosphoric acid as internal phase had been done. This technique is the combination of extraction and stripping processes designed to working simultaneously. The parameters studied included the molarity of phosphoric acid (H3PO4) as the internal phase, the molarity of nitric acid (HNO3) in the feed, concentration of di-(2-ethyl hexyl) phosphoric acid in kerosene as extractant, and time of extraction. the result for the experimental separation of 20,000 ppm of uranium in 500 ppm of ruthenium mixture showed that total recovery efficiency for uranium was 87.62% at the optimum conditions, i.e. 1.5 M molarity of H3PO4 3 M of HNO3, 1 % of D2EHPA in kerosene, and 10 minutes extraction time. at such conditions a 100% uranium can be separated from ruthenium