Recovery of uranium from wet phosphoric acid by solvent extraction processes

Uranium is mainly used as fuel for the production of nuclear energy as harnessed in generating electricity in many countries such as the United States, France, UK, Japan, India, China, and others. To a lesser extent, uranium is also used in reactors for propulsion of naval vessels, for basic and applied research, and for production of radioisotopes for multiple applications such as the treatment of cancer or for medical imaging. The loaded extraction solvent is fed into the stripping step where the metal is back-extracted into an appropriate aqueous solution, thereby achieving concentration of the uranium and purification from other metals in the initial leachate. In certain cases, other valuable metals such as molybdenum and vanadium can be coextracted and recovered as valuable byproducts. In all cases, uranium is precipitated from the resulting strip solutions as convenient salts such as ammonium diuranate, collectively called yellow cake.