Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Yellow cake extraction doubts

Yellow cake extraction doubts

Smoker Root - 2-8-2019 at 14:17

I've always love radioactivity. I extracted amoricium from smoke detectors, colected thorium etc... But until now I did not go into chemistry with this chemicals since every bit of glassware I have cost me a organ, and have them covered un radioactive material is not suitable for reactions. But I recently found some beakers, test tubes, RB and Erlenmeyer flasks in an antique store for less than 5$ So I am looking forward for it after cleaning them.

My first proyect is too extract yellow cake from autunite, aldo for now I AM just dreaming of it, since obtaining the mineral is virtually imposible (Aldo legal) but I think it is still very interesting too research and to find a suitable procedure.

So I researched a Lot and only Saw two videos showing the procedure. 1. From Rogers Nuclear and other from Unpaired electron. This is incredibly sad since I think is a well known procedure and I thought it would have more research. It was more sad when I saw the videos and Saw that there lab techniques were not the best. I don't think they are bad in a long shot, this guys know what they are doing, but I would prefer a well written paper esther than a video.

In any case, this two videos feel really interesting (especially Rogers Nuclear one) Un the unpaired atom one it gives a straight procedure, converting the uranium too it's nitrate form and then precipitating it out with H2O2. The only doubt I hace with this procedure is how much H2O2? I mean an excess of nitric acid won't matter since we will neutralize it with sodium bicab, but it will matter with peroxide. For the rest I think is a simple procedure, and I think that if you have Nice autunite with not many impurities it could work out fine.

I said Rogers Nuclear felt really interesting, because Aldo it gets on my nerves seing him manipulated acids an radioactive chemicals with no protection, I still think it gives a Nice amount of detail explaning the whole progress and showing how he is getting rid of impurities. His great yield and purity support him, and his purity test methology is really nice.

How do you extract yellow cake? Can you think of a better way? What do you think about this ones? Any other method you could share would be greatly apreciated.

Thanks, love you all

Ubya - 2-8-2019 at 16:28

reaction factory also has a video on the production of yellowcacke.
autunite can be bought from ebay, there are many chinese sellers that offer auctions of small samples

Smoker Root - 3-8-2019 at 00:36

Quote: Originally posted by Ubya

reaction factory also has a video on the production of yellowcacke.
autunite can be bought from ebay, there are many chinese sellers that offer auctions of small samples

Yeah he Made one extracting from the ore, but that is too much work and more difficult too find.
And yeah I found some autunite but it is really expensive and bad Quality.

Felis Corax - 3-8-2019 at 04:19

United Nuclear has uranyl nitrate, which seems chemically similar to autunite. No clue if it's in any way suitable for your purpose; if it's not then I apologise for this naive response.

Ubya - 3-8-2019 at 09:28

Quote: Originally posted by Smoker Root

Quote: Originally posted by Ubya

reaction factory also has a video on the production of yellowcacke.
autunite can be bought from ebay, there are many chinese sellers that offer auctions of small samples

Yeah he Made one extracting from the ore, but that is too much work and more difficult too find.
And yeah I found some autunite but it is really expensive and bad Quality.

you need to dig a few auctions, if you are patient you can get a good deal.
if you want to make hundreds of grams of yellowcake buying mineral samples is not going to be economical of course.
by the way, yellocacke is a broad term, what compound are you referring to? uranyl peroxide? ammonium uranate?

Smoker Root - 3-8-2019 at 13:31

Quote: Originally posted by Ubya

Quote: Originally posted by Smoker Root

Quote: Originally posted by Ubya

reaction factory also has a video on the production of yellowcacke.
autunite can be bought from ebay, there are many chinese sellers that offer auctions of small samples

Yeah he Made one extracting from the ore, but that is too much work and more difficult too find.
And yeah I found some autunite but it is really expensive and bad Quality.

Probably uranium oxide or peroxide. I don't know, I franquly would just prefer to extract those two but if not posible any uranium compounds that is easy and gives great yields and purity

Herr Haber - 5-8-2019 at 04:17

Quote: Originally posted by Smoker Root

Aldo gets on my nerves

Aldo Maccione gets on your nerves ?
(sorry but since you're using that word a lot maybe writing it correctly...)

Seriously,
You have a good idea, but... look how rich in Uranium the richest ore is and despair. Less than 1% in most cases.
This means a lot of material and a lot of mess.
If you dont want to work A LOT wearing PPE than you'd better chose another project.

I just hope that project wont be about cholinesterase inhibitors. You'd be sure to attract some attention after EM's and radioactivity. Not the right attention though.

Fulmen - 28-8-2019 at 10:33

I just started working on a PIN-diode geiger based on this work: opengeiger.de
Then I realized I don't have anything to test. Americium (alpha) won't work with stock diodes, my only other OTC candidate I can think of is potassium salts.

However, there is a vein of alum (black) shale not too far from here. It's a bit of a puzzle really, the alum shale in this region is supposed to be from mid-Cambrium to early Ordovician but this seems to be early Cambrium. But assuming it's of similar quality I can expect anywhere from 10-150+mg U/kg. Not enough to become a major player in the arms race, but I might be able to concentrate it a bit...

unionised - 28-8-2019 at 11:31

Uranium (and the daughters) at 150 parts per million may be tricky to spot. The rest of the rock will act as "screening".

Having said that, if you have an idea of the composition of the shale, it might be interesting to see how to concentrate uranium from it.

Ubya - 28-8-2019 at 14:33

without a good detector it is going to be hard to detect, my 5g of uranium acetate are pretty much invisible if in a glass vial (1mm wall), you won't pick much from 100mg spreaded in 1kg of material, the mineral itself will shield any radiation coming from the inside, you'll pick up only radiation from the surface, aka very little

Fulmen - 29-8-2019 at 00:54

The plan is to quire the shale before completing the geiger. It should be easy to spot against the surrounding limestone. I have some data on the composition:

SiO2: 46,35
TiO2: 1,22
Al2O3: 23,00
Fe2O3: 4.64
MgO: 3,14
CaO: 0.45
Na2O: 1,46
K2O: 7.17
P2O5: 0.25
C: 10,82
S,H2O: 3,30

From what I can find sulfuric acid is often used to concentrate low grade ore, and I believe that the Swedish nuclear program was based on alum shale. It should be possible to find something on how they processed it.

Fulmen - 30-8-2019 at 10:28

Huh, this was easier than I imagined. After a 20km trip with not a single sign I struck pay dirt less than 5km in the opposite direction. I'm sure I've driven past that spot a thousand times before...

Deathunter88 - 30-8-2019 at 15:58

Hey Smoke Root I am "Unpaired Electron" and I'm assuming this is the video of mine you watched. Natural uranium in reality poses very little radiation danger, and instead you should treat it like any other heavy metal. The amount of hydrogen peroxide added is also not critical as long as it is in excess, since the rest decomposes during the prolonged boiling.

I also wasn't able to find a straight paper explaining the procedure, and I made the video having done much trial and error. Feel free to ask any other questions you may have and I'll do my best to help you out.

Fulmen - 1-9-2019 at 01:14

Nice work, deathunter.
My goal isn't yellow cake (although it would be cool to have), for now I just need a reliable β/γ-source. The PIN-diodes can be modified to detect α, but I prefer to get things working with stock components. So basically I'm more interested in the decay products than the U itself.

Fulmen - 18-9-2019 at 09:41

There's uranium in them hills for sure. I'm using a radon meter in a small box, a 45g sample raised the radiation from a background level of 10Bq/m³ to over 350.