Indian Journal of Advances in Chemical Science, Volume: 9, Issue :2, April 2021

ISSN No.: 2320-0898 (Print); 2320-0928 (Electronic)

DOI: 10.22607/IJACS.2021.902001

Research Article

Surfactant based Analytical Method for the Determination of Di-n-butyl
Phosphate in Fast Reactor Fuel Reprocessing Plant Streams

ABSTRACT

Uranium and plutonium present in the nitric acid medium are selectively extracted by tri-n-butyl-phosphate (TBP) dissolved in Normal Paraffin Hydrocarbon as solvent in Plutonium Uranium Reduction Extraction process. Uranium and plutonium extracted selectively into organic phase rejecting bulk of the fission products to aqueous waste known as high active waste. During this process, the lean organic solvent is generated after extraction and stripping of uranium and plutonium need to be ascertained for its quality before recycling. This was attributed to the presence of degradation products of TBP such as di-n-butyl phosphate (HDBP) and Mono-n-butyl phosphate and phosphoric acid. A method has been developed for the determination of HDBP by electrical conductivity method for checking the quality of treated solvent. The developed method is simple did not use of expensive and sophisticated instrument as compared to reported methods. The conductivity of organic phase was found to be varying linearly with HDBP concentration follows with a correlation coefficient of 0.9971. The concentration range of HDBP that can be determined by this method was found 100–1000 µg/mL with a precision of 3.9%. Interference studies with uranium and zirconium were carried out and found to be not-interfering during the analysis.

Key words: : Di-n-butyl phosphate, Conductivity, Surfactant, Percolation, Plutonium uranium reduction extraction.

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