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Limpet Chicken
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When I was about 13-14 I used to be totally fascinated by phosphorus
(I still am  ) , at that age, I knew only very basic chemistry, but I used to
play with the impure red phosphorus I scraped off matchboxes and burned in piles on tin can lids to make a really fine glow in the dark film of white
P, and I loved to watch it burn when I poked it with matchsticks and stuff.
Sweet dreams are made of her
slit my wrists and dissappear
I am no-one any more
I wear my crown of thorns in view of all
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axehandle
Free Radical
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If someone finds a "stone age" method of extracting U from ore, I'm all game. I have access to lots of high content uranium ore and I
would love to have another small sample for my collection of elements.
My PGP key, Fingerprint 5D96 E09E 365D 1867 2DF5 C2FE 4269 9C19 E079 CD35
\"Verbing nouns weirds the language!\"
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Mendeleev
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I don't think there is any easy way to purify uranium. The industrial method involves sulfuric acid, tertiary amines, ammonia, nitric acid,
hydrofluoric acid, and calcium metal, all of which are not too hard to get, but it is a lengthy process and some of the equipment is probably hard to
construct. If you want uranium really badly I'd go with the ordering hundreds of replacement thorium lantern mantle, which are relatively easy
to get, and irradiate them with the americium-radium neutron gun, like the one David used in the article. This is U-233 however, still fissionable,
still possible to use in nuclear reactors and bombs.
[Edited on 11-6-2004 by Mendeleev]
Trogdor was a man. A dragon man. Or maybe just a dragon. . .
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axehandle
Free Radical
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Yes, yeeeess... But what I want is stable, nice U-238, not stuff that will give me cancer. I have actually been playing (together with my GF and her
father (who is a doctorate in psysics)) to build a cyclotron, but I'm not sure where to place my priorities......
My PGP key, Fingerprint 5D96 E09E 365D 1867 2DF5 C2FE 4269 9C19 E079 CD35
\"Verbing nouns weirds the language!\"
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Polverone
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what's in the ore?
Besides uranium compounds, that is? I'd imagine that doing a crude uranium extraction could be as simple as determining the main components of
the ore, looking at Sidgwick's Chemistry of the Elements or a similar book, and trying to figure out what U compounds are more/less
soluble than what you're trying to separate it from. I do think you may have a hard time given your limited access to chemicals, but that's
part of the challenge, right?
PGP Key and corresponding e-mail address
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Nick F
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Limpet Chicken: http://www.element-collection.com/index.html
You can buy a sample of uranium metal (or any other element) from these people. The uranium is not cheap though, you get very little, and it's
encased in resin. No fun!
I still have not been able to obtain any by any other route, and I'm normally very good at scamming things. I'm still trying though,
occaisionally.
Mendeleev: do you really think that kid actually managed to transmute a noticable amount of material? I don't know what his set-up was, but
I'm really not convinced at all. I believe most of the story is urban legend.
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Chemtastic
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Uranium from Uranium Ore
United Nuclear sells bulk uranium ore, as well as higher purity individual samples...
http://www.unitednuclear.com
Also, this page claims that a process for obtaining uranium compounds from the ore is coming soon...hasn't been updated in a year though , so if you really want to know when it might be available, I'd email the
company.
http://www.unitednuclear.com/extract.htm
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Boj
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| Quote: | Originally posted by ech310n
I don't think you will have much luck, if any at all, of aquiring uranium in element form for civilian use in Australia. You could try www.unitednuclear.com where they sell uranium ore from time to time though I don't think they ship out to Australia.
I don't know if this is of much help but I have heard that the nitrate is used as a photographic toner unless that is no longer in use. Uranyl
Acetate is also apparently used in analytical chemistry.
Edit: This could possibly be of a little help: Uranium Metal
[Edited on 1-3-2004 by ech310n] |
You can get Uranium ore from Ebay or several online sellers like United Nuclear just don't go buying any ore before I clean up there.
I'm from Melbourne and I received my first sample the other week. I got it from an Ebay seller, most of them should be willing to ship to
Australia and I'm also in contact with United Nuclear and they are very helpful as well.
As for legality of owning it I was told by the Victorian regulatory body that any sample below 40 Mbq doesn't require license to own but to be
honest the difficulty in determining activity of the samples and practical impossibility of policing this here makes me think that so long as you can
get your hands on it nobody will give you trouble whatsoever (the way it should be  ).
Legally however (I was told) you would need to get an import permit which is $110, however to cut a long story short, US sellers don't label
packages as radioactive (they don't have to by their law) so they pass customs and arrive in the mail just like any other package which is sweet
by me. My impression of the whole legal procedure for getting ore in Aus was that
there was little or no interest from the public on the subject hence little or no concrete and meaningful regulations so when I called them up they
gave me the usual procedure for importing all things radioactive. In any case in the real life any ore you buy from overseas will get in no problem
(as it should) so long as selllers don't label packages with radiation symbols.
As for legitimate uses, as a member of public you would have none other than perhaps as educational material.
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unionised
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according to this
http://members.tripod.com/vzajic/1stchapter.html#Table%204
40MBq is about 800 g or Uranium +daughters.
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budullewraagh
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if you have urananite ore, just replace the uranium with a more active element (ex any alkali metal). you'll end up with an alkali metal oxide
and uranium metal. if you're trying to separate the isotopes of the uranium, however, you won't be able to as the methods require thousands
of dollars worth of equipment that you'll never get your hands on legally (or illegally) anyway.
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Marvin
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budullewraagh,
Speculating with no examples is a really bad idea.
U ore is never pure oxide and most sold minerals are secondaries. Scholl method is worth a look. Digest mineral with nitric acid, dilute, treat with
ferric chloride and sodium carbonate. Discard ppt. Ppt by boiling with caustic soda and then redissolved in nitric acid. Ammonia is added to ppt
ammonium uranate and ignite this strongly to get the oxide.
Heating this with an alkali metal wont work. Thermite might work. Carbon reduction works but the result contains a lot of carbon - enough to
radically alter the melting point. Safest bet is probably to convert to chloride and reduce with calcium.
The Curie method is similar only precipitation is done first with hydrogen sulphide, and then with sodium sulphate. Polonium ends up as part of the
sulphide ppt, and the radium ends up in the sulphate. To concentrate the radium the sulphate ppt is subjected to prolonged boiling with sodium
carbonate solution, and the ppt containing radium carbonate is treated with hydrochloric acid. The resulting chloride is then fractionally
crystalised and when the amounts are small dilute hydrochloric acid is used to reduce solubility.
Uranium is quite reactive, its similar in many ways to group 2 elements like magnesium.
[Edited on 2-8-2004 by Marvin]
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budullewraagh
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hey word is "URANANITE" (ore). please note that i didn't say "uranium ore". urananite ore is quite pure uranium oxide.
also, i'd like to add that lithium or any alkali metal would replace the uranium in any form seeing as it is more active and the alkali metal is
not ionized in the first place which counts out the possibility of electronegativity differences with anions.
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BromicAcid
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Quick thermodynamic calculations give the following information.
UO2 + 4Na ----> U + 2Na2O
DeltaH = +256.6
DeltaG = +280.8
DeltaS = +73.2
Therefore the reaction is non-spontaneous at STP. For G to be a positive quanity we can set G to 0 and calculate the temp with the Gibbs free energy
equation.
T = deltaH/deltaS
T = [(256.6 kJ)(1000 J/kJ)]/73.2 J/K
T = 3505 K
So although this reaction could theoretically be used, it only becomes noticeable above 3505 K. Not really reasonable. But there is one obvious flaw
to this, who can name it?
Yes, that's right, sodium had a bp of 892C or 1165 K, so unless there are some massive pressures involved this is not going to be feasable.
Doesn't look to promising with the other alkali metals either. Thermite type reactions with aluminum and magnesium are also endothermic.
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budullewraagh
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lithium works better.
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Marvin
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"if you have urananite ore"
I can only assume this mythical mineral is gem quality UO2 and nothing but. The rest of the planet has to make do with a mineral we call uraninite
and this is typically small malformed cubic crystals in a much larger mass of material (uraninite ore). Its mined typically where the rock contains
only a few percent UO2 and this is more than enough for profitable extraction. This is where industry gets most of its uranium from. Massive UO2,
called pitchblende is also seldom the pure mineral and large rocks of it over 50% pitchblende are typically museum specimens, rare and expensive.
Even solid UO2 in nature (seperated from the ore, isolated crystals etc) is not chemically pure (to the point of being useful) UO2. It all needs
chemical processing.
Noone expects metals to gracefully and completely displace eachother according to reactivity outside solution, particulally with oxides. Chemistry
just isnt like that. As a general rule alkali metals do not work for reducing oxides. The reason probably has much to do with the poor lattice
energy of the alkali metal oxides and is related to the fact they volatilise at relativly low temperatures. The low boiling points of the metals
themselves also causes practical problems as Bromic has demonstrated.
"lithium works better. "
Based on what?
After looking up working methods (Mellor) the following is typical.
Carbon reduction of the oxide above 1500C, contaminated with carbon.
Aluminium reduction of UO2 works and is highly exothermic (sorry Bromic, but its what it says here) and is better than with U3O8. Product
contaminated with aluminium typically.
Conversion to chloride, or to sodium uranyl chloride and reduce with sodium works but there may be a purity problem and the uranium is produced in a
finely divided state - often pyrophoric.
Use of iron crucibles contaminates the uranium but not as much as iron in the reductant. Platinum crucibles has the same problem. Nickel, graphite,
magnesia and silver containers are all totally unworkable.
Reduction of the oxide by calcium can be used and purity can be high but the yeilds given are low.
A lot of people used CaCl2 as a flux with good results.
The gold prize for purity and yeild goes to... (drumroll)
Conversion to chloride and reduction with calcium.
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budullewraagh
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can you not be so condescending?
lithium works better in that it releases less energy AND is a better reducing agent than sodium.
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BromicAcid
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Don't you mean lithium works better because it releases more energy?
Regardless, I was wrong about aluminum, I accidently subtracted by reactants from products for my delta H calculation 
Never the less, it is exothermic, as is the reaction with lithium, however the temperature at which the reaction becomes rapid is still past the
boiling point of lithium and even if it would self sustain a majority of the lithium may boil off.
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ADP
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My school chem lab has a small bottle of reagent grade uranyl acetate about 28 grams to be exact. What is the stuff good for? Any interesting
experiments that it can be used for? Any interesting reactions?
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akinmad
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Enrico Fermi's patent no 2708656 describes a method called ether extraction for purifying Uranium. Actually the procedure make use of the
solubility of Uranium Nitrate in ether and impurities migrate to and stay in the aqueous phase (which is already saturated with Uranium Nitrate).
As for U-233 from thorium, I would not try it if you don't have a good moderator since if you bombard Th-232 with fast neutrons then you will
have U-232 which splits into very harsh gamma emitters.
I believe the industrial processes use a method called acid leaching from the ore. HTH.
P.S. As for the depleted uranium, this name is misleading. While it is called depleted there is nothing depleted in it. It still contains a good deal
of U-235 (above zero percent) and still harmful. When a DU projectile is used for piercing an armor, the uranium projectile burns (due to friction
occurring during penetration) and produces tiny (microscopic) particles of uranium and uranium oxides which may settle in the body cavities and cause
serious illness. In addition, even if DU contains pure U-238, it's still a radioactive (not fissile but fertile) substance which has at least a
half life - an indicator showing its little radioactivity. In addition it may undergo spontaneous so called fast fission by the background neutrons
causing mayhem in the body cavities.
A friend of mine from Iraq claimed that after the first Gulf War there was an increased incidence of cancer in Iraq due to DU projectiles used by GI
Joes.
[Edited on 20-9-2005 by akinmad]
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HammerOfLight
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He was trying to convert thorium into something else
He was on the right track, but never made it because his neutron gun was short low energy thermal neutrons, not the higher energies needed to cause a
transmutation reaction to occur. Now if he had built a FUSOR with some modification, he would have had a better show at transmutating the thorium
paint into something else.
-Bad people are punished by societies law, good people are punished by Murphy\'s law.
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HammerOfLight
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HCl
Quote: Originally posted by axehandle  | | If someone finds a "stone age" method of extracting U from ore, I'm all game. I have access to lots of high content uranium ore and I would love to
have another small sample for my collection of elements. |
You could use a ball mill to pulverize the ore, then react it with dillute HCl to dissolve out the uranium, it still won't be pure, but it will get
all the silica out. then allow it to crystallize, you should have uranium chlorides. You could then melt it down in a crucible in a really hot furnace
to burn off the chlorides leaving you with mostly metals including URANIUM.
-Bad people are punished by societies law, good people are punished by Murphy\'s law.
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12AX7
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Too bad there's an awful lot of iron and other things in there.
IIRC, nitric is usually used to extract uranium. I suppose sulfuric would work too.
An alkaline or (after mixing a ligand) solvent extraction would be a good way to purify it somewhat.
Thermally decomposing chlorides will yield very little metal, indeed you can't even get copper this way, let alone iron, uranium, magnesium, etc.
However, you can manage to boil off a lot of your materials, since all chlorides have high vapor pressure. A more reactive metal, such as calcium, is
required to displace the metal in solution, or electrolysis of the molten salt.
Tim
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densest
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My copy of solvent extraction has gone walkabout... there are several chapters on extracting U from various ores. Having tried solvent extraction with
gold, I'd recommend it as an easy way to bypass a whole lot of ugly lab work. It has its own downside, including spilling the working fluid all over
everything or breathing too many vapors, but for small quantities and amateur work it is very appealing.
If the book surfaces I'll post relevant material.
----
It surfaced. "Solvent Extraction Principles and Practice" 2nd edition, Rydberg et al. editors, ISBN 0-8247-5063-2 Marcel Dekker Inc.
pp 507-557 "Solvent Extraction in Nuclear Science" has a lot of random stuff (I didn't know that Ruthenium was a fission byproduct - wonder what
isotope....). The most interesting detail was that TBP = tributyl phosphate is the solvent of choice, in less than 30% concentration in a carrier
(kerosene?). Australian ores are said to be dissolved in H2SO4 + oxidizer. Additives to the lixivant are mentioned in various contexts - tridecanol is
used in a number of processes.
Apparently if TBP picks up too much U it gets so heavy it doesn't separate well from water which is why a lighter carrier liquid is used.
Hope this helps. I don't have a lot of time to scan things and my scanner is slow, so if the book is available in a library I'd recommend getting it
there. A number of scientists in CSIRO are very much in the forefront of solvent extraction, so reading their papers should be helpful, and talking to
them might get even more information.
[Edited on 12-5-2010 by densest]
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grndpndr
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Local Uranium Mines/Mill
Were in a similar situation as axehandle,perhaps a bit less healthy.Uranium ore was processed IN town,DOWNTOWN actually a few blocks off main.
The Piles of uranium tailings sandlike were used by local children as very large sandboxes surrounded by nonexistent fences.The workers didnt change
at work back then so thier contaminated clothing came home with them to irradiate the familys.Tailings were also considered a very good building
material or rather fill for new basements etc.Lots of radon in the basements.Why?This town I believe or rather red canyon some few miles distant is
considerd the hottest property in the US if your a Uranium miner with many manmade caves with a pretty YELLOW CAKEing on the rock after a few years of
water leaching through the rock.Even our 2500ft waterwells are above nat standards for radon content.Good news is all those struck down by cancer,
workers at the mine and familys of the mineworkers
recieve a very generous $250,000 get well check from tennese valley authority.Some pretty natural yellowcake high grade Uranium ore is for the taking
by the truckload if so inclined here in west SD.Ill collect some and sell it to ya?Whats it worth?
Im pretty sickly anyhow so it dont matter a whole bunch.Might be interesting to take some to the university and have it tested.possibly try to
nitrate a sample.It was the 50s/60s I guess? Still,they knew but mum was the word and cold war the threat.
About DU, best thing to happen to kinetic energy AT weapons.I have no Idea how many ft steel armor a 120mm discarding sabot fin stabilized long rod
penetrator will hole,though Im sure the 120 will hole the glacis plate of a T72 and better@ least 3k plus.Nasty stuff but its AP propertys have saved
many lives in AT work.I wouldnt closely inspect the hulk of a DU penetrator victim,whats left anyway after the secondarys and fires!!
But! Does the post office have any means of radiation detection in the system.Selling it following regs might be tough?And Im certainly NOT
interested in being party to a naturally dark skinned,toweled headgear, foriegners Idea of a radioactive joke.
[Edited on 12-5-2010 by grndpndr]
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woelen
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@HammerOfLight: I have a small sample of finely crunched technical grade U3O8. It is a very dark green solid, almost black. I don't know its origin,
it might be mechanically selected and crunched pitchblende, or chemically treated pitchblende which contains mostly U3O8. To me it was sold as
"technical grade U3O8", several years ago. I have tried your method of extraction with HCl. It does not work. Not even in boiling conc. HCl does any
of the oxide dissolve. It is too inert. The same is true for moderately concentrated sulphuric acid.
The U3O8, however, does dissolve in 53% nitric acid. You need some heating but it does dissolve, giving a yellow/green (non-fluorescent) solution of
uranyl nitrate and some brown nitrogen oxide gas mix above the liquid. Some dark insoluble stuff remains (I think that is silicate crap), but 90% or
so dissolves.
I even was able to purify to some extent. I decanted the liquid from the remaining dark crap and neutralized the acid with dilute NaOH such that the
final solution only is slightly acidic. Next, I added some 10% H2O2 (which gives a pale yellow very fine precipitate) and waited. The next day I had a
layer of pale yellow UO4.2H2O at the bottom and this can be rinsed with clean water to get rid of most sodium nitrate and other impurities from other
metals. The UO4.2H2O can be further worked up. Heating converts it to ochre UO3, which can be dissolved in nitric acid to give uranyl nitrate. The
formation of the peroxo compound UO4.2H2O is very specific to uranium and provides a fantastic means of isolating uranium from other metals.
I am not sure whether I will make a webpage of this stuff for my website. Uranium is too sensitive in the eyes of the government and I don't want
legal trouble. If you wish, I, however, can post some pictures of the UO4.2H2O and the solutions over here.
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