• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Resources Recycling Conference
• /
• 2003.10a
• /
• pp.241-245
• /
• 2003

Thiourea 용액에서 금의 고속 전해채취를 위해 사이클론 전해조를 사용하여 금의 회수에 대한 연구를 수행하였다. 금 전해채취의 전해거동을 알기 위해 전해질의 유속, 인가전압, 초기 농도 등의 변수에 대한 실험을 하였다. 기초실험을 통하여 얻은 최적조건 조업하에서 2시간 이내에 전해액 중에 존재하는 99%이상의 금을 회수할 수 있었다.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.47 no.5
• /
• pp.588-595
• /
• 2015

This study presents an effective method for additional recovery of residual actinides in liquid electrodes after the electrowinning process of pyroprocessing. The major distinctive feature of this method is a reactor with multiple reaction cells separated by partition walls in order to improve the recovery yield, thereby using the interelement difference in diffusion coefficients within the liquid electrode and controlling the selectivity and purity of element recovery. Through an example of numerical simulation of the diffusion scenarios of individual elements, we verified that the proposed method could effectively separate the actinides (U and Pu) and rare-earth elements contained in liquid cadmium. We performed a five-step consecutive recovery process using a simplified conceptual reaction cell and recovered 58% of the initial amount of actinides (U + Pu) in high purity (${\geq}99%$).

• Resources Recycling
• /
• v.6 no.3
• /
• pp.36-40
• /
• 1997

A series of processes has been developed to recover the gold from electronic scrap containing about 200~600 ppm Au. First, mechanical beneficiation including shredding, crushing and screening was employed. Results showed that 99 percent of gold component leaves in the fraction of under 1mm of crushed scrap and its concentration was enriched to about 800 ppm without incineration. The crushed scrap was leached in 50% aqua regia solution and gold was completely dissolved at $60^{\circ}C$ withing 2 hours. Other valuable metals such as silver, copper, nickel and iron were also dissolved. The resulting solution was boiled to remove nitrous compounds in the leachate. Finally, a newly designed electrolyzer was tested to recover the gold metal. More than 99% of gold and silver were recovered within an hour by electrowinning process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
• /
• 2018.05a
• /
• pp.53-54
• /
• 2018

U/RE was electrochemically recovered to LCC at $50mA/cm^2$ from LiCl-KCl salt containing $0.5wt%UCl_3$, $0.22wt%NdCl_3$, 0.15wt%$CeCl_3$ and $0.07wt%LaCl_3$. The Cd in the LCC deposit was removed during the distillation using Cd distiller. U/RE product of 107g obtained from the distiller was installed to TG and then heated to $1200^{\circ}C$ to be consolidated. Dense U/RE metal ingot was not acquired through the consolidation process because U/RE product had been partially already oxidized during the distillation process.

• Resources Recycling
• /
• v.6 no.3
• /
• pp.41-45
• /
• 1997

The recovery of tellurium from Te-cement obtained during the processing of copper anode slimes was carried out by a series of hydrometallurgical processes, i.E. leaching Te-cement in NaOH solution, precipitation of impurities with the addition of ${Na}_{2}S$ followed by direct electrowinning of tellurium in NaOH solution. The optimum conditions for each process were determined and discussed in terms of various parameters associated with each step to maximize the recovery and purity of tellurium. The final purity of tellurium from electrownning in alkaline solution was found to be more than 99.9%.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
• /
• v.45 no.2
• /
• pp.190-196
• /
• 2007

This study examined the nitrate removal efficiency which uses an electrowinning, and also analyzed the nitrate removal efficiency under a variety of operating conditions such as nitrate concentrations, pH, current densities, electrodes, reducing agents in order to determine optimal conditions. In addition, the multi-step electro-chemical process test has been also analyzed. During the electrowinning, the identical Zn-Zn and Pt-Ti electrodes in the insoluble oxidation electrode(Pt) has shown the highest nitrate removal efficiency in the 100 mg $NO_3^{-}$ -N/L concentration. In the concentration of 150 mg $NO_3^{-}$ -N/L, the efficiency of the Zn-Zn electrode were 70~85%, and that of Pt-Ti electrode were 40~50% without any change of pH. In the high concentration of 500 and 1,000 mg $NO_3^{-}$ -N/L, the higher the concentration, the more decrease of its nitrate removal efficiency decreased. However, the energy consumed for nitrogen removal increased when the nitrate concentration was high. As a result of the multi-step electro-chemical process test, We chose the Test 4. Because the first, most of the zinc consumed from 1 step was recovered from over the 2 step. The second, amount of consumption anode decreased with insoluble anode Pt from over the 2 step. And the third, Zn cathode increased the possibility of reusing Zn deposited. In view of the results so far achieved, the multi-step electro-chemical process would be applied to treat nitrogen involved in metal finishing wastewater.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
• /
• v.8 no.4
• /
• pp.261-267
• /
• 2010

The pyrometallurgical nuclear fuel recycle process, called pyroprocessing, has been known as a promising nuclear fuel recycling technology. Pyroprocessing technology is crucial to advanced nuclear systems due to increased nuclear proliferation resistance and economic efficiency. The basic concept of pyroprocessing is group actinide recovery, which enhances the nuclear proliferation resistance significantly. One of the key steps in pyroprocessing is "electrowinning" which recovers group actinides with lanthanide from the spent nuclear fuels. In this study, a vertical cadmium distiller was manufactured. The evaporation rate of pure cadmium in vertical cadmium distiller varied from 12.3 to $40.8g/cm^2/h$ within a temperature range of 773 923 K and pressure below 0.01 torr. Uranium - cadmium alloy was fabricated by electrolysis using liquid cadmium cathode in a high purity argon atmosphere glove box. The distillation behavior of pure cadmium and cadmium in uranium - cadmium alloy was investigated. The distillation behavior of cadmium from this study could be used to develop an actinide recovery process from a liquid cadmium cathode in a cadmium distiller.

• Resources Recycling
• /
• v.16 no.1 s.75
• /
• pp.54-58
• /
• 2007

In the continuous flow reductive treatment for recovery of silver from actual photographic wastewater, the effects of electrolysis time, applied potential, and the concentration of silver ion on the process have been examined. The efficiency of silver recovery for diluted photographic wastewater was increased with applied potential and reached its maximum at 6 V. However, the recovery of silver was shown to be decreased with potential above this. When the wastewater was undiluted, the efficiency of silver recovery was observed to rise as the applied potential became lower under the experimental conditions.

• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
• /
• 2004.02a
• /
• pp.150-164
• /
• 2004

According to the Korean long-term plan for nuclear technology development, KAERI is conducting a few R&D projects related to the proliferation-resistant back-end fuel cycle. The R&D activities for the back-end fuel cycle are reviewed in this work, especially focusing on the study of the partitioning and transmutation(P&T) of long-lived radionuclides. The P&T study is currently being carried out in order to develop key technologies in the areas of partitioning and transmutation. The partitioning study is based on the development of pyroprocessing such as electrorefining and electrowinning because they can be adopted as proliferation-resistant technologies in the fuel cycle. In this study, various behaviors of the electrodeposition of uranium and rare earth elements in the LiCl-KCl electrorefining system have been examined through fundamental experimental work. As for the transmutation system, KAERI is studying the HYPER (HYbrid Power Extraction Reactor), a kind of subcritical reactor which will be connected with a proton accelerator. Up to now, a conceptual study has been carried out for the major elemental systems of the subcritical reactor such as core, transuranic fuel, long-lived fission product target, and the Pb-Bi cooling system, etc. In order to enhance the transmutation efficiency of the transuranic elements as well as to strengthen the reactor safety, the reactor core was optimized by determining its most suitable subcriticality, the ratio of height/diameter, and by introducing the concepts of optimum core configuration with a transuranic enrichment as well as a scattered reloading of the fuel assemblies.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
• /
• 2001.10a
• /
• pp.140-143
• /
• 2001

A study has been made on the recovery of nitric acid and valuable metals such as Cu, Sn, Pb from the spent nitric etching solutions. The nitric acid was extracted effectively by TBP but the heavy metals such as Fe, Cu, Sn, Pb were not extracted by TBP from the spent nitric etching solutions. From the experimental results, 95% of nitric acid in spent etching solution was extracted at O:A ratio of 3:1 with five stage by 60% TBP and 98% of nitric acid was stripped from the loaded organic phase at O:A ratio of 1:1 with four stages by distilled water. After extracting nitric acid, Cu was recovered as a metal by electrowinning effectively and Sn was successfully removed by precipitation method by adjusting the pH of raffinate solution. Finally, Pb was recovered by cementation with iron scrap at $65^{\circ}C$. Parameters controlling the cementation process, such as temperature, pH and the effect of the additives were investigated.