Extracting Uranium Oxide Using HCL

[RLS0812]

I know it this is not very efficient ( I can buy uraninite legally ) , however I would like to attempt to extract uranium oxide from glass by dissolving it in hydrochloric acid.

I believe I will end up with uranyl chloride salts ( which are photosensitive ).



I am not a chemist, however, and I am stuck on how to extract the uranium oxide out of the uranyl chloride .

Any ideas ?

[Enthalpy]

Last time I hade HCl in glass it didn't dissolve it.

Few acids do and these are for chemists only.

 

Cute picture in your logo!

Edited February 13, 2014 by Enthalpy

[RLS0812]

I am not asking about dissolving glass - I am asking about extracting uranium oxide from uranyl chloride.

 

The glass I just grind up into powder, than wash it in HCL to dissolve the uranium oxide.

 

Edit: I may have the answer. If I heat the Uranyl Chloride just past 100C, The Chloride should vaporize, leaving behind uranium oxide.

I'll have to look at this a bit more, however, as this is a very toxic method.

Edited February 24, 2014 by RLS0812

[John Cuthber]

"The glass I just grind up into powder, than wash it in HCL to dissolve the uranium oxide."

What uranium oxide?

[Sensei]

"The glass I just grind up into powder, than wash it in HCL to dissolve the uranium oxide."

What uranium oxide?

 

According to website

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_glass

 

Uranium glassware is made of Diuranate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diuranate

I guess so OP doesn't know which is secondary metal..

 

[RLS0812]

I would assume uranate - however it is imposable to tell just by looking at the glass.

 

In any case, after reading some more, I would need to boil the HCL at 110C while diluting with distilled water until the hydrogen chloride is evaporated (( and extracted before it recombines with moisture in the air )). After an unknown amount of time, I could than evaporate the solution to receive the final product, which hopefully would be Uranium Oxide and not Uranyl Chloride .

[John Cuthber]

Uranium glass contains typically 1% or so of uranium (presumably as a silicate).

The rest is glass (hence the name).

So, at best the acid might leach uranium from the surface of the powdered glass, but most of it would be stuck inside the grains of glass.

You won't get that out unless you dissolve the glass somehow.

That's why Enthalpy said "Last time I had HCl in glass it didn't dissolve it."

 

Frankly, if you know that little about chemistry I'd advise against working with uranium: it's rather toxic.

[RLS0812]

If I used Hydrofloric Acid, I'd end up with uranium hexafluoride gas + the impurity from all the glass

Edited February 24, 2014 by RLS0812

[John Cuthber]

Yes and no.

If you used anhydrous HF then you would (possibly) get UF6

(I rather suspect you would get a fluoro-uranyl fluorosilicate of some sort)

In aqueous solution you would get a different mess.

 

Frankly, if you know that little about chemistry I'd advise against working with uranium hydrofluoric acid: it's rather toxic.

[jonjonsonson]

hey Lepton

 

it would be great if you kept us updated with your progress....funny enough, we are working on a similar project and are very interested in your experiments.

 

thanks!

 

jon

[RLS0812]

I found some one with a decent fume hood, and we decided to run the experiment to see what happens.

 

I started with 800 grams of uranium marbles which should be, in theory, be 2% - 5% uranium oxide by weight.

 

They were ground up into powder, than mixed into a solution of 20% hydrochloric acid. The mix was agitated for 3 hours before the solids were filtered out. The resulting liquid was brownish yellow in color.

Inside of the fume hood we set up 2 hot plates, one at a higher elevation than the other. In the top flask was placed demineralized water, in the bottom flask the mixture.

The top hot plate was set to 98C - the bottom one set to 110C.

We ran a tube from the top to the bottom, and set up a drip that would be equivalent of the evaporation rate of the mixture.

The mixture was left alone until the PH read 6.4 .

The rest of the demineralized water was than emptied into the mixture, and it was left to boil off.

Once there was very little of the liquid left, it was removed from the heat, and let to evaporate at room temperature.

 

Once everything was evaporated off, I collected a brown/yellow powder and placed it on a "shaker table" normally used to separate gold partials from sand. After that was ran for a while, the impurities were scrapped off the top.

 

Total yield was 9 grams of impure uranium oxide.

[John Cuthber]

A typical glass is about 10 or 20% sodium (as the silicate.

That will leach out with dilute acid at least as well as the uranium will.

Did you remove it somehow?

Or might your "yield" include roughly 5 times as much sodium as uranium? (And there's also Ca, Mg etc to contend with).

[RLS0812]

A typical glass is about 10 or 20% sodium (as the silicate.

That will leach out with dilute acid at least as well as the uranium will.

Did you remove it somehow?

Or might your "yield" include roughly 5 times as much sodium as uranium? (And there's also Ca, Mg etc to contend with).

When I stratified the powder some of the impurity were removed, however I'm not a chemist, so I have no clue what the purity of the uranium oxide was.

Edited March 13, 2014 by RLS0812