Studying the Separation and Hazard Effect of some Radionuclides and Rare Earth Elements from Monazite Mineral

Abstract

Egyptian monazite is chemically processed after its breakdown using sulfate process for recovering of REEs, thorium and uranium. Beside removal of these elements as radioactive contaminates from REEs products, their recovery would increase to their importance in the field of nuclear energy. In this work during the digestion of monazite mineral by sulfuric acid, U6+ and Th4+ ions combine with sulfate ions to form uranyl sulfate and thorium sulfate complexes whose pass through strong anion resin Amberjet 4200 Cl resin. The sorption was investigated in both batch and column studies at different operating conditions. At pH of 3.0 and 2.5 and 0.5 M (SO4) -- for both uranium and thorium respectively, the dominant solution species of U(VI) is [UO2(SO4)3]-4 and [Th (SO4)4]-4 for Th (IV) anionic complexes. Uranyl sulfate and thorium sulfate sorption by Amberjet 4200 Cl has been studied to find out the proper mechanism, equilibrium and kinetics parameters.