Uranium determination by UV-Vis spectrophotometry in organic matrix

Concentrations of uranium in the process samples provide essential information required for nuclear process monitoring. A large number of techniques have been developed to allow uranium determination, but each technique possesses some advantages and disadvantages and cannot be applied without difficulty to all samples. The ultraviolet visible spectrophotometry (UV-Vis) is widely method used in analytical industrial processes due to its simplicity, rapidity, low costs, low generation of analytical waste, easy calibration and operation. In this study, we describe a simple and fast quantification method to determination of a high amount of uranium in organic phase (TBP/kerosene) using UV-Vis spectrophotometry. The process sample was analyzed in UV-Vis and compared with inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP OES) showing similar results in both methods. The statistical tests (Student-t and Fischer) showed that the both techniques they are equivalent. (author)