• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.792-799
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• 2019

The present study aims to investigate the fluorination of thorium oxide ($ThO_2$) by ammonium hydrogen difluoride ($NH_4HF_2$). Fluorination was performed at room temperature by mixing $ThO_2$ and $NH_4HF_2$ at different molar ratios, which was then left to react for 20 days. Next, the mixtures were analyzed using X-ray diffraction (XRD) at the intervals of 5, 10, 15, and 20 days, followed by the heating of the mixtures at $450-750^{\circ}C$ with argon gas flow. The characterization of $ThF_4$ was established using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy-dispersion X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX). In this study, ammonium thorium fluoride was synthesized through the fluorination of $ThO_2$ at room temperature. The optimum molar ratio in synthesizing ammonium thorium fluoride was 1.0:5.5 ($ThO_2:NH_4HF_2$) with 5 days reaction time. In addition, the heating of ammonium thorium fluoride at $450^{\circ}C$ was sufficient to produce $ThF_4$. Overall, this study proved that $NH_4HF_2$ is one of the fluorination agents that is capable of synthesizing $ThF_4$.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.1560-1569
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• 2022

Liquid fueled molten salt reactors (MSRs) have seen renewed interest because of their inherent safety features, higher thermal efficiency and potential for efficient thorium utilisation for power generation. Thorium fluoride is one of the salts used in liquid fueled MSRs employing Th-U cycle. In the present study, ThF₄ was prepared by hydro-fluorination of ThO₂ using anhydrous HF gas. Process parameters viz. bed depth, hydrofluorination time and hydrofluorination temperature, were optimized for the preparation of ThF₄ in a static bed reactor setup. The products were characterized with X-Ray diffraction and experimental conditions for complete conversion to ThF₄ were established which also corroborated with the yield values. Hydrofluorination of ThO₂ at 450 ℃ for half an hour at a bed depth of 6 mm gave the best result, with a yield of about 99.36% ThF₄. No unconverted oxide or any other impurity was observed. Rietveld refinement was performed on the XRD data of this ThF₄, and Chi2 value of 3.54 indicated good agreement between observed and calculated profiles.