OBTAINING HYDROGEN FLUORIDE DURING THE INTERACTION OF URANIUM HEXAFLUIORIDE WITH HYDROGEN AND OXYGEN IN A COMBUSTION REGIME. EXPERIMENT

In the course of experiments on a pilot plant with a vertical cylindrical reactor of the "tunnel burner" type whose inside diameter is equal to 142 mm, it has been established that when UF6, H-2, and O-2 with a nearly 1:3:1 molar ratio respectively and a cold-mixture-flow Reynolds number of the order of 10,000 are fed to the reactor, a stable flame of diffusion combustion is formed It is initiated by a self-igniting fluorine-ammonia pair at a fluorine flow rate of the order of 0.5% of the UF6 flow rate. The major uranium-bearing product of the flame process was a mixture of uranium oxides, mainly UO2 and U3O8, in which fluorine covalent-bonded to uranium was present in the amount 0.1-3% mainly in the form of UF4 and UO2F2. The major fluorine-containing product was hydrofluoric acid with a content of hydrogen fluoride higher than 95%. From the data obtained, a technology can be developed for obtaining anhydrous hydrogen fluoride from depleted uranium hexafluoride.