Ask Nelson is a FREE research tool for British Financial Information

UK LOANS, MORTGAGES AND FINANCE INFORMATION

SECURED LOAN FINANCE STATUS & NON STATUS LOANS
FREE PHONE
0800 169 5297 (Homeowners only please)

Go4aMortgage

Commercial
Residential
Buy To Let
Re-mortgages
NON Status & CCJ
Self Build Mortgage

NEED MORE INFORMATION?

BANKING	PENSION	MORTGAGE
Banking Online Banking Business Banking Banking Loan Offshore Banking Building Societies Cash ISAs Current Accounts Savings Accounts Alt Search Terms	Annuity Retirement Planning Personal Pensions Stakeholder Pensions Pension Transfers SIPPS Pension Advice Pension Company Pension Scheme Alt Search Terms	Mortgages Adverse Credit Buy to Let Equity Release Mortgages Mortgages Overseas Self Certification Mortgages Remortgage Mortgage Brokers Mortgage Providers Alt Search Terms
UK Financial Services Sub-categories: Accounting \| Banks \| Building Societies \| Corporate Finance \| Credit Services \| Currency Services \| Debt Collection \| Directories \| Factoring \| Financial Consultants \| Fund Management \| Independent Financial Advisors \| Information Services \| Insurance \| Leasing \| Merchant Services \| Offshore Services \| Organisations \| Personal Finance \| Publications \| Regulation \| Socially Responsible Investment \| Stockbrokers \| Taxation Article Index: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8

Reversing Mother Nature, Part Two

By: James Finch

We talked to North America’s leading In Situ Leach (ISL) uranium mining engineers, and had them explain exactly how ISL worked. Most of the significant ISL operations in the United States were designed and/or constructed by these engineers. They explained how ISL mining is really just reversing the process of Mother Nature.

ISL EXTRACTION AND PROCESSING

During ISL mining, water is pumped to the surface from production wells that contain uranium in very low concentrations, on the order of parts per million concentrations. The next step in the ISL process is to extract the uranium dicarbonate. Extraction is done by chemically exchanging ions inside a processing facility. “The ion exchange process is very analogous to a home Culligan® water softener,” Anthony revealed. “It removes hardness or calcium from the water by replacing it with sodium, using ion exchange resins. If you go to Lowe’s or Home Depot, and buy a water softener, you basically have a home version of a uranium extraction plant.” The main difference is your water softener will have a cation exchanger. “For a uranium plant to function properly, you need to use an anion exchange resin, which is specifically designed to load uranium,” Anthony clarified.

And what is this magical “ion exchange resin”? The resin is comprised of little polymer beads, which are charged particles having an affinity for uranium anions. “There are literally millions of these small resin beads in a vessel, which can adsorb low concentration of uranium in solution,” said Anthony. Adsorption is when something is attracted to something else or clings to it, like static electricity.

Why do you have to process uranium like this? “In essence, the ion exchange process is a beneficiation (reduction) process that concentrates large volumes of low concentrate uranium solution into a much smaller volume containing a much higher concentration of uranium,” said Anthony. In other words, the beneficiation is just concentrating the uranium from the large volume of water in which it is mined into a more compact form. The preferred means is through an ion exchange.

Anthony gave a real-life example of the beneficiation process, “Three million gallons of wellfield solution containing dilute concentrations of uranium, of 100 parts per million minus 0.10 grams/liter, is passed through a bed of ion exchange resin. This might take 24 hours to achieve if the solution is flowing at 2,500 gallons per minute. After this length of time, the resin becomes loaded with approximately 2,500 pounds of uranium.”

STRIPPING THE URANIUM

Stripping the uranium is called the elution process. This is done through a chemical exchange of positively and negatively charged ions. Resins are classified by the charge on the active sites. “The active sites on the resin are positively charged for anion resins and negatively charged for cation resins,” Norris enlightened us. “The resin’s ability to extract chemical ions from a solution is derived from what’s called an active site,” he continued. “In our case, chloride ions obtained from ordinary tale salt are used to stabilize or temporarily neutralize this positively charged active site.” The negatively charged chloride ion sticks to the positively charged site, held in place by what Norris called “electrostatic forces.” When the negatively charged ions, such as uranyl dicarbonate, are placed in contact with the solution, it will kick off the chloride and replace that with the uranyl dicarbonate.

That was the chemistry lesson. Anthony summed it up in a nutshell, “They just displace it. There’s a greater affinity for the chloride ion to the resin than there is for the uranium. So, the uranium is stripped from the resin bed.” The processing facility chemically strips the loaded uranium from the resin by soaking the entire package of uranium-laden resin in a salt bath solution. “The volume of salt solution is on the order of 10,000 gallons resulting in a solution concentration of 30 grams/liter uranium,” Anthony said, describing the process of how the uranium becomes concentrated. “The stripped uranium solution concentration is magnified 300 times more than the wellfield solution,” he informed us. “The concentration level can now be economically processed for recovery: precipitation, dewatering, drying and drumming for a nuclear facility.”

GETTING URANIUM INTO THE DRUM

After the uranium has been removed from the solution, it is precipitated. At this point in the processing stage, you have yellowcake slurry. Up close, it looks like a sort of yellowish and wet, runny cement mixture. The dewatering process does just that, it removes the water from the yellowcake mixture.

“I use a filter press, a device that is designed to separate solids from solutions,” explained Anthony. Filter presses are extensively used in various types of food, chemical and drug processing across the world. “The uranium solids, now looking more like yellowcake, are retained in the filter press, where they can be washed and later air dried, before drying them to a powder with a low temperature vacuum dryer,” said Anthony taking us step by step through this process.

So what is the filter press and how do you end up with the finished yellowcake when you’re done? “It’s a series of plates and hollow frames, or it could be a series of recessed chambers,” Anthony answered. “Filter cloth is draped over the plates or chalked in the recessed chambers. The yellowcake slurry is pumped through the filter allowing the liquid phase to pass through the filter cloth, trapping the uranium oxide inside the device.” Anthony likes to pack the filter press up with as much yellowcake as it can hold. “It is then washed with clean water to displace the chloride ions to a low level,” Anthony explained. If you don’t remove the chloride concentrations to the acceptable level required by an uranium enrichment facility, a fine is assessed against that shipment.

The final steps include conveying the yellowcake to the vacuum dryer. The uranium oxide’s color depends on how high or low a temperature is used to dry the “yellowcake.” Patrick Drummond, the Smith-Highland Ranch plant superintendent, showed us pure uranium oxide dried at high temperatures. It was nearly black. After the drying process is complete, the uranium is packaged up in DOE-approved 55 gallon drums and transported to an enrichment facility. It is then when the enriched uranium can finally be used to power a nuclear reactor and provide an inexpensive source of electricity.
**********************************************
James Finch contributes to StockInterview.com and other publications. Get your free subscription and receive the latest articles by James Finch by visiting www.stockinterview.com. Write to James Finch at jfinch@stockinterview.com. More information about Harry Anthony is available at www.hanthony.com

This article is free for republishing

Article Source: http://www.articlealley.com James Finch is a contributing editor for StockInterview.com and other publications.
http://www.stockinterview.com

RSS integration by RSSinclude

Go4TechInfo.com
Main Category:
Technology
Sub-categories:
Acoustics, Ultrasound and Vibration
Aerospace Engineering
Automotive Engineering
Biomedical Engineering
Chemical Engineering
Civil Engineering
Computational Engineering
Conferences and Events
Cryotechnology News
Cybernetics News
Electrical Engineering
Electronics
Energy
Engineering News
Food Science
Industrial Engineering
Invention and Innovation
Lighting Inovations
Manufacturing Technology
Materials in Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Metallurgy News
Metrology Links
Military Science
Mining Technology
Nanotechnology News
Professional Exams
Pyrotechnics Research
Quality Engineering
Reliability Engineering
Safety Engineering
Sanitary Engineering
Science Directories
Science Organizations
Software for Engineering
Space Travel and News
Structural Engineering
Technology Academia
Technology Education
Television Development
Transportation Research
Welding
Popular Search Terms
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7
Article Index 1 - 2

CLICK HERE!

Travel Options
HOTEL + AIR | HOTEL + AIR + CAR

AskVicky - AskAnn's Best Mate!

Jack at Sea - an online cruise 7 holiday diary

Blog/Diary Events 15 to 26 Jan 06 - New York to Rio de Janeiro
The pages recording the "Shenanigans" and controversy of the first leg of our voyage.
Blog/Diary Events 27 Jan to 7 Feb - Rio to Valparaiso
Happier times, great pictures, finally 'round the Horn, some funny stories along the way.
Blog/Diary Events 8 to 22 Feb - Valparaiso to Los Angeles
A sad tale of sickness and quarantine with some memorable tours and a "cunning plan"...
Using the Time
Research at Sea - An amazing collection of useful links and research topics.
Reading Articles at Sea
Music
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
Travel & Leisure
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10

1st4Capital UK Loans

Homeowners
Non Homeowners

Bad credit history
CCJ's or Mortgage

NEED MORE INFORMATION?

Return to Index

© The information on this page has been gathered from various sources.
Where possible, AskNelson links back to the original sources.

NO LIABILITY WILL BE ACCEPTED FOR ANY ACTIONS CARRIED OUT IN RESPONSE TO ANY INFORMATION DISPLAYED BY WEB SITES LINKED TO BY AskNelson. YOU SHOULD ALWAYS SEEK PROFESSIONAL ADVICE BEFORE MAKING ANY FINANCIAL DECISIONS.

SECURED LOAN FINANCE STATUS & NON STATUS LOANS FREE PHONE 0800 169 5297 (Homeowners only please)

Reversing Mother Nature, Part Two

SECURED LOAN FINANCE STATUS & NON STATUS LOANS
FREE PHONE
0800 169 5297 (Homeowners only please)