Studies on lowering of uranium from mine water by static bed ion exchange process. Issue 10 (3rd July 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Karan, Ram; Rajan, K.C.; Sreenivas, T.
• Is Part Of: Separation science and technology. Volume 54:Issue 10(2019)
• Page Start: 1607
• Page End: 1619
• Publication Date: 2019-07-03
• Subjects: Uranium -- mine water -- ion exchange -- adsorption; Separation (Technology) -- Periodicals; 660.284205
• DOI: 10.1080/01496395.2019.1572188
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0149-6395

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This paper gives results of the studies carried out for lowering of U content in mine water of a carbonate-hosted uranium ore deposit using static bed ion exchange technology with an emphasis on using chemicals benign to the environment and operating plant. The mine water contained 2 mg/L of U. The limiting concentration of U for safe discharges fixed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) is ≤ 0.03 mg/L. The investigations carried out include screening of various commercial strong base anion exchange resins for the duty condition followed by optimization of operating parameters during loading and elution with 'screened-in resin'. Modeling of the U sorption on the resin was also carried out. A commercial strong base anion exchange resin namely PFA 4759 satisfied the desired conditions for safe discharges. PFA 4759 gave good loading capacity of about 28 g of U per litre of wet settled resin, when the counter-ion was bicarbonate anion with 50 bed volume/h of mine water as volumetric throughput. Elution studies with strong bicarbonate solution (1M) indicated the scope of recovering 99% of the loaded U. The adsorption followed the Langmuir model with pseudo-second-order kinetics.