Ionic liquids are a family of non-conventional molten salts that can act as a tunable solvent in solvent extraction processes [1]. They offer many advantages, such as negligible vapor pressures, wide liquidus ranges, good thermal stability, tunable solubility of both organic and inorganic molecules, and much synthetic flexibility. Herein, neutral and task specific ionic liquid 1-10-phenanthroline-2,9-dicarboxamide derivatives were investigated as f-element extractants in different imidazolium-based ionic liquids. The task specific ionic liquid ligands were able to selectively extract Am(III) over Eu(III) with separation factors over 50 with good distribution ratios at [HNO3] = 1 mol. L-1. These ligands were also studied for the separation of lanthanides. High selectivity was obtained for heavy lanthanides with the neutral ligand and for light lanthanides with a task specific ionic liquid with D values up to 300,000.

Tailoring Ionic liquids for f-element separation

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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