Study of uranium recovery from sulfate medium utilizing bulk liquid membrane containing Alamine 336 in kerosene

In the present study, the uranium recovery by utilizing the bulk liquid membrane which contains Alamine 336 has been investigated. The effect of uranium and sulfuric acid concentration in the donor phase, carrier concentration in the liquid membrane phase, and ammonium carbonate concentration in the acceptor phase and transport kinetics were studied. The optimum conditions of uranium transport were obtained at 0.15 mol.L-1 H2SO4 in donor phase, 0.5 mol.L-1 (NH4)2CO3 in the acceptor phase, 0.0125 mol.L-1 Alamine 336 in kerosene. The results demonstrated that by increasing the concentration of sulfuric acid up to 0.15 mol.L-1  and the Alamine 336 concentration to 0.0125 mol.L-1, the uranium transfer will increase and then decrease. The uranium transfer was decreased with an increment in initial uranium concentration. Studying the effect of time on the uranium transfer showed that the cause of rate-controlling is the release of uranyl from the liquid membrane phase to the acceptor phase. The kinetics of uranium transport was modeled assuming consecutive irreversible pseudo-first-order reactions. The extraction rate constant of 0.0061 min-1 and 0.0107 min-1 and the stripping rate constant of 5.56×10-4 and 12× 10-4 min-1 were obtained for liquid membrane containing Alamine 336 and sulfated Alamine 336, respectively.