Continuous recovery of concentrated solute from the melt by countercurrentelectromigration

On reprocessing spent metallic fuels in a molten salt bath it is very impor tant to recover electrochemically base metals, such as Cs, Sr and Ba, from the salt bath repeatedly. For this purpose, we have investigated the intern al mobilities of Cs in equimolar NaCl-KCl mixtures and the relative differe nces between the mobilities of Cs, Sr and Ba in the same solvent. From the view point of the technological aspects we designed an original countercurr ent electromigration cell which is arranged to recover concentrated solute in the column from the melt. This electromigration method could be effectiv ely used to separate multivalent cations from monovalent cations under the conditions of high current density, and the applicability of this new techn ique to cleaning the melt bath was demonstrated. (C) 2000 Published by Else vier Science S.A. All rights reserved.