Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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'Brine Management through brine mining of trace metals' for developing Secondary sources of nuclear fuel

  • T.L. Prasad (Chemical Engineering Group, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre)
  • Received : 2022.06.08
  • Accepted : 2022.10.21
  • Published : 2023.02.25
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Abstract

The brine and seawater are important and largely untapped sources of critical trace metals and elements. The coupling of selective recovery of trace metals from seawater/brine with desalination plants gives an added advantage of energy credits to desalination plants and as well as reduce the cost of desalinated water. In this paper, status review on recovery of important trace metals and other alkali metals from seawater is presented. The potential of Indian desalination plants for recovery of trace metals, based on recovery ratio of 0.35 is also highlighted. Studies carried out by the process based on adsorption using Radiation Induced Grafted (RIG) polymeric adsorbents and then fractional elutions are presented. The fouling factors due to bio fouling and dirt fouling have been estimated for various locations of interest through field trails. The pay loader in the form of compact Contactor Assembly with minimum pressure drop, for loading specially designed radiation grafted sorbent in leaflet form has been briefed, as required for plant scale facility. The typical conceptual process design details of farm assembly of project CRUDE are described.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

The author wish to thank Director Chemical Engg Group and Head DD Bhabha Atomic Research Centre for giving encouragement to the programme. Thanks are also due to ROD, RTDD, L&PTD and APPD divisions of BARC for their technical suggestions and EB facilities. Thanks are also due to MDPD/BARC for technical suggestions related to mechanical design aspects. Author wish to thank Dean HBNI for supporting academic aspects of the programme. Special thanks are due to Shri AK Saxena DD BARC for his interest and technical suggestions. The authors wish to gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of RUSWapp team, staff at NDDP (Nuclear Desalination Demonstration Plant) Kalpakkam for the extensive help in data collection. And special acknowledgements to Radiation Chemistry Division; Analytical Chemistry Division; Fuel Chemistry Division and Environmental assessment divisions of BARC for analysis of samples.

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