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Molten Salt Electrolysis for Sustainable Metals Extraction and Materials Processing 33 as fused salt electrorefining. In the electrorefining step, the principal components of the fuel (uranium, cladding, and fission products) are electrochemically separated to become three products: pure uranium for storage and two stable high-level waste forms (one metal and the other ceramics) suitable for long-term disposal. Similar molten salt processes were reported by the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors in Russia and the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute to process Irradiated mixed oxide fuels and to store PWR spent fuels, respectively [123, 124]. A more attractive route would be to use the FFC-Cambridge Process to reduce oxides to the metals [81]. The advantages of this process are that oxide ions do not accumulate in the melt allowing more of the actinide oxides to be reduced and allowing the salt to be used for far longer before disposal. 4. FUSED SALT ELECTROLYSIS COMBINED WITH OTHER PROCESSES 4.1. Electrolysis Combined with Chlorination Processes It has been around 35 years since a major new technology for producing aluminium was installed: the Alcoa smelting process (bipolar electrolytic process). There can be no denying that the Alcoa smelting process was an engineering achievement with its bipolar electrode array, fluoride-free electrolyte and negligible carbon consumption rate. Yet the plant proved to be an economic failure and was ultimately closed, even though the electrolysis step was 30 % more efficient than the HHC. 4.2. Carbothermic Reduction Followed by Fused Salt Electrorefining For the production of magnesium, there are basically two methods. Firstly, in the metallothermic processes, MgO is reacted with a reducing agent in an electric furnace under vacuum and, secondly, there are the electrolytic processes, described earlier in this article. The principal drawbacks of the bath thermic operation are the need to operate at greatly reduced pressure, a solid rather than a molten product is obtained, the purity of the product is low and the condensers are relatively inefficient. The main drawback of the electrolytic process is the high cost of feed preparation, which was mentioned earlier. There have been several attempts to use carbothermic reduction but in order to get the reaction: MgO + C = Mg(g) + CO(g) (35) to proceed, the temperature has to be around 2030 °C. However, on cooling the above reaction reverses producing MgO and carbon. Anderson and Parlee have suggested to conduct the reaction in a molten solvent, to reduce the activity of the reduced magnesium, driving the reaction to the right, and then removing the magnesium by distillation [125, 126]. As the overall reaction is endothermic, there is unlikely to be an excess of heat available, and this would appear to make distillation an expensive process. All the solvent metals suggested, tin,PDF Image | MOLTEN SALT ELECTROLYSIS
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