The Recovery of An(Iii) in an Innovative-Sanex Process using a Todga-based Solvent and Selective Stripping with a Hydrophilic BTP

The development of an innovative-SANEX process for the selective recovery of trivalent actinides from PUREX raffinate using a TODGA/1-octanol based solvent is presented. CDTA was used to efficiently mask Zr and Pd. Two options were studied for the selective An(III) stripping. First, a glycine-buffered DTPA solution was successfully employed. A great improvement was the use of the hydrophilic SO3-Ph-BTP, which allowed the selective An(III) stripping even at 0.5 mol/L HNO3 without using buffering or salting-out agents, making the advanced partitioning process easier and more efficient. High Ln/Am separation factors were achieved in single centrifugal contactor tests.