Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.60, No.1, 507-513, 2021
Scaling Trivalent Actinide and Lanthanide Recovery by Diglycolamide Resin from Savannah River Site's Mark-18A Targets
The Savannah River National Laboratory is implementing a separation flowsheet to recover rare isotopes and transplutonium elements from irradiated 'Pu targets known as Mark-18A targets. The Mark-18A targets contain the United States' supply of nonseparated Pu-244, which has a wide range of applications from nuclear forensics to production of superheavy elements such as flerovium. The targets also contain hundreds of grams of heavy curium (Cm246-248), which is used as a target material for Cf-252 production. This work investigates the use of diglycolomide resin (DGA Resin) to recover valuable trivalent actinides from the Mark-18A targets. Batch contact experiments were performed on a representative simulant to determine mass loadings. The resin showed an overall capacity of 11 mg/mL for a mixed metal matrix (Zr and La-Gd). Column experiments showed chromatographic separation with transition-metal breakthroughs occurring first followed by the lanthanide series La-Gd. The experiments showed that lanthanide breakthrough occurred after 11 mg/mL mass loading was reached on the column with the mixed metal matrix. A radiological column experiment with an in-line UV/vis cell was able to detect Nd breakthrough just prior to Am-241 breakthrough. Implementing an in-line UV/vis cell into full-scale Mark-18A target processing will be used to limit breakthrough of trivalent actinides recovered from the targets.