Liquid membranes for separating uranium from vanadium and uranium from molybdenum

This is the third paper in which we describe the transport of uranium ions through liquid membranes. The subject of this paper is the use of liquid membranes to separate uranium from other metals that are present in hydrometallurgical leach solutions derived from uranium ores. It is demonstrated that liquid membranes can cleanly separate uranium from vanadium. The separation of uranium and molybdenum is also investigated. Although this separation is not as clean as that of uranium and vanadium, the results indicate that further refinement of operating conditions of the liquid membrane could lead to substantial improvement. Based on the potential of the membranes to separate the various metal ions, several process schemes are suggested that could be used to recover uranium from hydrometallurgical leach solutions