EARTH

[3801-11-10] Zirconium recycling from spent acid of nuclear fuel cladding by electro-winning in BaF2-ZrF4 molten salt.

○Jeong-Hun Choi¹, Youngjun Lee¹, Hayk Nersysian¹, Sunghun Lee¹, Jonghyun Lee¹ (1. Chungnam National University)

Chairman: Jonghyun Lee（Chungnam National University）, Liyuan Chai (Central South University)

Keywords:Zirconium, Electrowinning, Ba2ZrF8, Waste acid, Vacuum distillation

Nuclear fuel cladding tube is fabricated by pilgering and annealing process. In order to remove oxygen layer on the surface, the pickling process is carried out. When Zirconium(Zr) is dissolved and saturated in acid solution during the pickling process, all the waste acid including Zr is disposed. In this study, it was investigated to recover Zr from the waste acid by precipitation and electrowinning process. To extract Zr from it, precipitation was performed by adding BaF2 into it and Ba2ZrF8 was subsequently formed. BaF2-ZrF4(50:50 mol%) molten salt was made by additionally putting ZrF4 into Ba2ZrF8 to decrease the melting point for electrowinning. Cyclic voltammetry was measured to observe the Zr oxidation and reduction behavior, and polarization behavior was also analyzed by chronopotentiometry. Zr was electrochemically deposited on Cu plate and residual salt in Zr deposit was removed by vacuum distillation. Zr ingot was also fabricated by arc-melting.