Synthesis of work of Minemet Recherche in the field of the extraction of uranium contained in crude phosphoric acid

Minemet Recherche has developed a new technique for the extraction of uranium by means of ion exchanger resins, which have been designed specially for this purpose. These resins have a chelating hydroxy-diphosphonic grouping as the active grouping. The development of the resin, has shown that it was possible to obtain, at a reasonable cost, resins to fix the uranium at contents of over 10 g/l, starting from phosphoric acid with 30% P2O5 with a uranium content of not over 70 ppm. The recovery process is extremely simple and includes fixing by contact between the resin and the phosphoric acid, rinsing neutralization and elution by an alkaline carbonate with an oxidizing agent, if necessary. The eluted resin can be passed to a new cycle immediately or after an acid rinsing. Uranium is precipitated from the carbonate solutions with conventional techniques in the form of a commercial yellow cake. An economic survey has indicated that such a process is profitable even at the depressed market price of uranium and even with phosphoric acids containing little uranium. 3 tables, 5 figs, 18 refs