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Kinetic properties and electro-separation of U on binary liquid Ga–Al eutectic alloy cathode

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Abstract

The binary Ga–Al alloy cathode has been proven to be a prospective candidate for the separation of actinides over lanthanides (Lns) in the dry reprocessing. Therefore, in this work the electrochemical behaviors of U(III) on solid Al, liquid Ga and Ga–Al eutectic alloy cathodes were studied by cyclic voltammetry, and the kinetic properties of U(III)/U on these reactive cathodes were also investigated via electrochemical impedance spectroscopy technique in LiCl–KCl melts. The results showed that the exchange current density (j0) of U(III)/U on the Ga–Al eutectic alloy cathode is the largest, and followed the order: Ga–Al eutectic alloy > Ga > Al. Finally, U was electro-separated on the binary Ga–Al eutectic alloy cathode in a molten salt system containing U and representative Lns (La, Ce, Pr, Nd). The electrolysis products were validated to be Al3U and Ga3U according to XRD and SEM–EDS characterizations. The extraction rate of U was determined to be 88.3% via ICP-OES. This work is of theoretical guidance for high-temperature molten salt electro-separation of An over Ln.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Major Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21790373), National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (No. 21925603), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. U20B2020), Project No. 1211111126-9 by Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Nuclear Energy Chemistry, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Da-Wei Yang, Shi-Lin Jiang, Ya-Lan Liu, Jia-Zhuang Chen, Dong-Dong Wang, Lin Wang, Zhi-Fang Chai & Wei-Qun Shi

  2. Department of Electrolysis, Institute of High-Temperature Electrochemistry, Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Yekaterinburg, Russia, 620990

    Yuriy Pavlovich Zaikov

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  1. Da-Wei Yang
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Contributions

DWY: Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Validation, Data curation, Software, Formal analysis, Writing Original draft, Writing Reviewing and Editing. SLJ: Investigation, Data curation, Software, Formal analysis, Reviewing. YLL: Supervision, Validation, Data curation, Funding acquisition, Reviewing and Editing. JZC: Data curation, Software. DDW: Data curation. YPZ; LW: Data curation. ZFC: Conceptualization, Supervision. WQS: Conceptualization, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Funding acquisition, Writing Reviewing and Editing, Project administration.

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Correspondence to Ya-Lan Liu or Wei-Qun Shi.

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Yang, DW., Jiang, SL., Liu, YL. et al. Kinetic properties and electro-separation of U on binary liquid Ga–Al eutectic alloy cathode. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 332, 1377–1387 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-023-08782-y

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