| Abstract: | This paper deals with the studies on the separation and recovery of plutonium from nitric acid medium using Di-nonyl phenyl phosphoric acid (DNPPA) in n-paraffin as an extractant system. The different extraction parameters were investigated. The percentage extraction of plutonium decreased with increase in nitric acid concentration. The optimum solvent concentration for quantitative separation of plutonium from aqueous feed solution was 0.15 M of DNPPA whereas n-paraffin/n-dodecane was the most suitable of diluents with an organic to aqueous phase ratio of 1:1. Among the various strippants used, 0.5 M solution of (NH4)2CO3 was found to be the most suitable for back extraction of plutonium from the loaded organic phase. The developed method was used to separate and recover plutonium from actual wash solution of ion exchange column used for plutonium purification. More than 73% of plutonium was separated from 7 M HNO3 wash solution using 0.15M of DNPPA in n-dodecane. |
