Abstract

Uranium and plutonium present in the nitric acid medium are selectively extracted by tri-n-butyl-phosphate (TBP) dissolved in
Normal Paraffin Hydrocarbon as solvent in Plutonium Uranium Reduction Extraction process. Uranium and plutonium extracted
selectively into organic phase rejecting bulk of the fission products to aqueous waste known as high active waste. During this
process, the lean organic solvent is generated after extraction and stripping of uranium and plutonium need to be ascertained for
its quality before recycling. This was attributed to the presence of degradation products of TBP such as di-n-butyl phosphate
(HDBP) and Mono-n-butyl phosphate and phosphoric acid. A method has been developed for the determination of HDBP
by electrical conductivity method for checking the quality of treated solvent. The developed method is simple did not use of
expensive and sophisticated instrument as compared to reported methods. The conductivity of organic phase was found to be
varying linearly with HDBP concentration follows with a correlation coefficient of 0.9971. The concentration range of HDBP
that can be determined by this method was found 100–1000 μg/mL with a precision of 3.9%. Interference studies with uranium
and zirconium were carried out and found to be not-interfering during the analysis.