Development of an integrated process for recovery of uranium from ore and its refining at the location of new uranium mill at Turamidih, Singhbum District

The second uranium ore processing plant of Uranium Corporation of India Limited is being set up at Turumdih near Jameshedpur. This plant would incorporate several new technologies. The uranium would be eluted from loaded resin with dilute sulphuric acid, and this acidic eluate assaying around 25g U3O8/l would be neutralised with alkali to produce yellow cake. The next fuel fabrication plant is also expected to be located at Turamdih, close to the new uranium mill. To take advantage of this co-location of the two plants, the feasibility of integrating the two process flow sheets has been investigated. The data collected during laboratory trials on development of an integrated flow sheet are presented. The process involves introduction of the conventional ELUEX process using the tertiary amine Alamine 336 to extract uranium from the sulphuric acid eluate solution followed by nitrate stripping of uranium from the amine phase to yield a concentrated solution of uranyl nitrate. Since this step involves a change over from a sulphate to a nitrate medium, this solution would contain appreciable amount of sulphate. Since the presence of sulphate has deleterious effect on the next step of purification, it is eliminated by precipitation as gypsum by addition of calcium nitrate. Finally, uranium is purified by solvent extraction with tributyl phosphate. The final product of uranyl solution obtained in laboratory trials has been found to pass the specifications for nuclear purity. A process flow sheet has been finalised and is undergoing large bench-scale trials. (author). 6 refs., 1 fig., 1 tab