The Spectrophotometric and Radiochemical Determination of the Specificity of the 2-Thenoyltrifluoroacetone(TTA)-xylene Extraction of Iron(III) under Conditions of High Acidity

The application of solvent extraction to systems of high acidity has been greatly limited in the past, due to the instability of solvents and complexing agents under such corrosive conditions. The continual production of new complexing agents and their use with different solvents, however, always poses the possibility that such high acidity extractions may become practical. Such solvent extractions could be employed advantageously for many purposes, not the least of which would be their application to the separation of fission products and other materials present in the processing of fuel elements and components of reactor systems. Since these components are dissolved in concentrated acid, it would be very useful to have separation procedures which might be applied under the prevailing conditions. This paper is an attempt to make a small advance into this area of investigation. The particular project concerned is that of the extraction of iron from high molar nitric acid solutions by the use of 2-thenoyltrifluoroacetone(TTA), using xylene as organic solvent