Continuous recovery of concentrated solute from the melt by countercurrent electromigration

Abstract On reprocessing spent metallic fuels in a molten salt bath it is very important to recover electrochemically base metals, such as Cs, Sr and Ba, from the salt bath repeatedly. For this purpose, we have investigated the internal mobilities of Cs in equimolar NaCl–KCl mixtures and the relative differences between the mobilities of Cs, Sr and Ba in the same solvent. From the view point of the technological aspects we designed an original countercurrent electromigration cell which is arranged to recover concentrated solute in the column from the melt. This electromigration method could be effectively used to separate multivalent cations from monovalent cations under the conditions of high current density, and the applicability of this new technique to cleaning the melt bath was demonstrated.