Keywords

molten salt, voltammetry, concentration prediction, nuclear fuel reprocessing, electrorefining

Abstract

For electroanalytical measurement of molten chloride salts, various voltammetry methods have been used on mixtures of MgCl2 and LaCl3 in eutectic LiCl-KCl. These salt mixtures are of primary interest to spent nuclear fuel electrorefining systems. MgCl2 is used as a surrogate for PuCl3, while LaCl3 represents rare earth fission product salts. Cyclic voltammetry scans with these salt mixtures exhibited extra peaks, presumably due to underpotential deposition of La(III) ions onto Mg. Quantitatively, the current contribution from each peak was best determined using normal pulse voltammetry and fit to the Cottrell equation. This yielded linear correlations for concentration versus diffusional current with very high correlation factors. Applying this method, it was determined that concentration measurement error was less than 4% for both MgCl2 and LaCl3.

Original Publication Citation

Wang, Z., Rappleye, D., Yang, C. S., & Simpson, M. F. (2016). Application of Voltammetry for Electroanalytical Measurement of Concentrations in LaCl3-MgCl2 Mixtures in Eutectic LiCl-KCl. Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 163(10), H921. https://doi.org/10.1149/2.0351610jes

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

2016-08-08

Permanent URL

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/8626

Publisher

The Electrochemical Society

Language

English

College

Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering

Department

Chemical Engineering

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