Obtaining Hydrogen Fluoride During the Interaction of Uranium Hexafluioride with Hydrogen and Oxygen in a Combustion Regime. Experiment

In the course of experiments on a pilot plant with a vertical cylindrical reactor of the “tunnel burner” type whose inside diameter is equal to 142 mm, it has been established that when UF₆, H₂, and O₂ with a nearly 1:3:1 molar ratio respectively and a cold-mixture-flow Reynolds number of the order of 10,000 are fed to the reactor, a stable flame of diffusion combustion is formed. It is initiated by a self-igniting fluorine-ammonia pair at a fluorine flow rate of the order of 0.5% of the UF₆ flow rate. The major uranium-bearing product of the flame process was a mixture of uranium oxides, mainly UO₂ and U₃O₈, in which fluorine covalent-bonded to uranium was present in the amount 0.1–3% mainly in the form of UF₄ and UO₂F₂. The major fluorine-containing product was hydrofluoric acid with a content of hydrogen fluoride higher than 95%. From the data obtained, a technology can be developed for obtaining anhydrous hydrogen fluoride from depleted uranium hexafluoride.