Studies on the uptake and column chromatographyic separation of Eu, Th, U, and Am by tetramethylmalonamide resin

Shimada, Asako ; Sulakova, J.*; Yang, Y.*; Alexandratos, S.*; Nash, K. L.*

A tetramethylmalonamide-functionalized resin (TMMA resin) has been developed and investigated for its ability to separate trivalent, tetravalent, and hexavalent actinide elements. As a fundamental study of the extraction mechanism and to design a chromatographic separation scheme, distribution coefficients () for partitioning of Eu(III), Th(IV), U(VI), and Am(III) onto the resin from HNO, NaNO, HCl and NaCl solutions with and without organic acids and potential consistents of low-level radioactve waste have been determined. The competition between metal extraction and HNO extraction was confirmed by the extraction data and FT-IR spectra. Based on these fundamental experimental results, an extractive chromatographic scheme for actinide isolation was designed and demonstrated.