Abstract:
With the development of nuclear power industry in our country, the needs for uranium will increase drastically. But as the uranium resource in uranium mines are very limited, much attention has been paid on the uranium recovery from other resources, such as sea water and high salinity brine. Accurate determination of uranium concentration is very important, if uranium recovery was performed on this complicate water. Trace uranium determination in high salinity brine, for instance, salt lake and intercrystalline bittern samples, was studied in present work by using ultraviolet fluorescence method. As the instrument is stable, the optimal conditions for uranium determination are found to be: pH=2-12, added fluorescence-enhancing agent amount of 500 μL; to reduce the negative effect of impurity ions on uranium determination, both direct dilution and TBP extraction fluorescence methods are investigated. The procedure used for TBP extraction fluorescence method is confirmed by employing different solvents as TBP diluent, and the uranium recovery rate is determined to be 85%. Under the optimal conditions, both methods mentioned above were used for analyzing uranium concentration in salt lake and intercrystalline bittern samples. The obtained results were compared with those measured by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) method. Good consistency among the results is founded, which clearly shows that the method can be used for uranium determination in high salinity brine.