Method for recycling uranium from uranium extraction tailings

Abstract

The invention discloses a method for recycling uranium from uranium extraction tailings, which comprises the following steps: crashing the tailings until the grain diameter is less than 2 mm, adding nitric acid to mix to enable the pH value of the ore pulp to reach 0.6-0.9, adding the nitric acid and water to control the volumes of the nitric acid and water to be 1.5-2 times of the mass of the tailings, heating to 65-70 DEG C, stirring and soaking for 1-1.5 hours, or after stirring and mixing uniformly at the normal temperature, soaking for 30 days, separating liquid and solid, washing the soak slag by the water until the pH value of the soaked slag is close to a neutral value (pH=5-7); adding bone glue into the nitric acid lixivium, placing and aging for 5-7 days to make supersaturated salt materials in the lixivium separate out, adjusting the pH value of the lixivium to 1.75 by using caustic soda, and then carrying out ion exchange absorption on the uranium using a 717 type anion exchange resin, eluting uranium ions by using 0.2 mol / L of nitric acid to 0.4 mol / L of ammonium nitrate solution as an eluent; and adjusting the pH value of the eluent to 7-8 to neutralize and precipitate the uranium to obtain uranium ore concentrates containing 65-75% of uranium. By adopting the method, the recycling rate of the uranium can reach over 90%.

Description

technical field [0001] The invention relates to the technical field of metallurgy, in particular to a method for secondary recovery of uranium from volcanic rock type uranium extraction tailings by wet method. Background technique [0002] There are many large-scale or even super-large volcanic rock-type uranium deposits in my country. The deposits are large in scale, similar in mineral composition, and basically of the same genetic type, such as the Le'an uranium deposit in Fuzhou, Jiangxi. The mining and smelting of these large uranium mines laid a solid foundation for the development of my country's early atomic energy industry, especially in breaking the Western nuclear monopoly and making great contributions to the peaceful use of nuclear energy. [0003] Since the late 1950s, after nearly 50 years of uranium mining and smelting, this type of volcanic rock-type uranium deposit has produced more than 20 million tons of highly radioactive uranium tailings during the long-...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

[0005] Since some uranium hydrometallurgical plants have adopted the traditional hydrometallurgy process to extract uranium from the primary uranium ore, when the uranium remaining in the tailings is extracted by the traditional uranium extraction process, firstly, the uranium recovery rate is lower than 60% %, the uranium content in the slag is higher than 120ppm; second, the extraction cost is relatively high, and under the current uranium market price conditions, there is no commercial extraction value

Due to the limitations of the above factors, it is impossible to effectively and economically recover uranium in tailings

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