Commercial approach for highly pure thorium from Egyptian monazite mineral acid process | ||
| The International Conference on Chemical and Environmental Engineering | ||
| Volume 10, Issue 10, July 2020, Pages 1-12 PDF (424.36 K) | ||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||
| DOI: 10.1088/1757-899X/975/1/012022 | ||
| Author | ||
| A I L Abd El Fatah | ||
| Nuclear Materials Authority, Cairo, Egypt. | ||
| Abstract | ||
| Thorium has a special interest in the future nuclear energy as a fuel especially the breeder reactors. The present research has been fulfilled throughout successive research schedule manner on separation and purification of thorium from Egyptian beach monazite mineral after its acid digestion. Monazite mineral was digested with sulfuric acid 96% at 220°C for 2.5h and dissolute with ice water (1:15), the clear solution precipitated with ammonia solution 16.5% at pH 1to produce thorium pyrophosphate with 45% thorium content in case of ideal optimized whole process. The purification was carried out after the caustafication and leaching with hydrochloric acid followed by the addition of oxalic acid at pH 0.3-0.4 to produce thorium oxalate with 91.68 % purity. Thorium oxalate was transformed to oxide by caustafication then washed and separated and dissolute by hydrochloric acid. Highly pure thorium salt was attained with the addition of thiosulphate salt on the produced faint chloride solution under 0.1 to maximum 0.5 phosphate content to produce 99% purity. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| monazite mineral; thorium; separation; purification | ||
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