Studies of Uranium Recovery from Tunisian Wet Process Phosphoric Acid

The growing worldwide energy demand associated with several inter related complex environmental as well as economical issues are driving the increase of the share of uranium in energy mix. Subsequently, over the last few years, the interest for uranium extraction and recovery from unconventional resources has gained considerable importance. Phosphate rock has been the most suitable alternative source for the uranium recovery because of its uranium content. Solvent extraction has been found to be a successful process for uranium separation from phosphoric acid. The synergistic solvent mixture of Di-2-EthylHexyl Phosphoric Acid (DEHPA) and TriOctyl Phosphine Oxid (TOPO) diluted in kerosene has been the favored because of its high efficiency and selectivity for uranium extraction. In the present work, uranium extraction from Tunisian Wet Process Phosphoric Acid (WPA) using DEHPA in combination with synergistic reagent TOPO is presented. An experimental study was conducted in order to optimize the operating parameters affecting uranium recovery from phosphoric acid. The effect of temperature, solvent ratio, acid concentration and extractants concentrations were considered. The experiments were performed at a laboratory scale with batch extractions. Overall extraction yields are reported in this work. High uranium extraction yields exceeding 95% were obtained in all extraction steps but one where the yield was 92%. The overall recovery yield was 81%.