THE CONTROL OF SPEC/FICATIONS PERTAINING TO THE PRECUREMENT OF URANIUM CONCENTRATES

Abstract

The present thesis is mainly concerned with the control of specifications pertaining to the precurement of uranium concentrates which is related to uranium ore processing. The starting material is the EI­ Sebayia West phosphate ore, which is an important non-conventional low grade uranium ore (60ppm U and 25.23% P20s). In fact, the three main operations, uranium leaching (phosphoric acid production in this study), extraction and precipitation are closely linked and should be considered as components of a single system. However, this study excludes the TBP refining process of the produced yellow cake.

In the first chapter, literature survey was performed on various items. One of the main items is, uranium recovery from phosphoric acid produced by hemidihydrate process, second is the effect of preparatory history on uranium concentrates mainly; ammonium uranate (AU), ammonium uranyl carbonate (AUC), uranium peroxide (U04), uranium tetrafluoride (UF4) and uranium oxides such as U308 and U03.

The second chapter is dealing mainly with the uranium recovery during hemidihydrate phosphoric acid production. The production of phosphoric acid by hemidihydrate method is divided into three parts. The first deals with the characteristics of the input phosphate sample as received from El-Sebayia West where different studies were observed such as sieve analysis of the ore. It was found that the size of the input ore is very reasonable for direct preparation of phosphoric acid without grinding. Complete chemical analysis of the major, minor and trace elements are performed using different techniques. A comparison is made with the standard phosphate of the central Florida rock.