High-sulfur diesel fuel and fission product extraction.

I was doing some reading on Fischer-Tropsch diesel synthesis when I came across an interesting bit of technical trivia, which I thought was interesting enough to share:

It was reported by Russian scientists in the academic literature in the 90’s that bad quality, high sulfur, diesel fuel has been used as a a liquid-liquid extraction agent in the solvent extraction of palladium from the nitric acid raffinate solution in the PUREX process.

In this process the the hydrocarbons of the diesel act as the diluent while the dialkyl sulfides act as the extractant.

Usually, tributyl phosphate is employed as the extractant solvent in the PUREX process, as a 30%, or thereabouts, solution in dodecane, or kerosene. Since diesel fuel is chemically close to kerosene, and contains aliphatic hydrocarbons at around the same weight as dodecane, clearly diesel fuel is quite usable in this process, with the dialkyl sulfides fulfilling the role of the TBP in standard PUREX extraction. I wonder if this is capable of extracting other elements from the fission products, too?

While this is of little practical consequence, I found it interesting.

The White Elephant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjP7OSHb4iU

I hope Caldicott doesn’t think that’s really John Howard she’s speaking to, but you never know.

Also, I can’t help but wonder if the air compressor they’re using to inflate the elephant is powered by some sort of renewable energy?