Concentration of uranium content of the Black Sea sediments using froth flotation

Abstract

The recent studies about The Black Sea Sediments sowed that it containst trace amounts of uranium. In the production of uranium metal, uranium minerals are separated from gange minerals by hydrometallurgical processes. Since the Black Sea Sediments have very low uranium content the direct application of hydrometallurgical processes in creases the reagent amounts. To overcome this problem, in this thesis work application of flotation in order to obtain a concent rate which will be rich in uranium content is studied. In flotation experimentst the effect of changes of pH, the quantity of filotation reagents and pulp density on uranium r concentration were studied. A method of uranium analysis based on spectrophotometry was chosen for the analysis of the sediments tailing and concentrate. The highest yield obtained was 31.8 % , and this recovery was obtained using 0.01148 gr Na2Si03 with 17 minutes conditioning time, 0.01 gr FeC13 with 15 minutes conditioning time and a mixture of aeropromoter reagents with 60 minutes conditioning time. The other parameters were chosen as follows : Pulp density 20 %, medium pH 8 and flotation time 5 minutes.