Uranium Separation from Wastewaters by Continuous Electrodeionization (CEDI) Using Cation Exchange Resin

Separation of uranium from nuclear wastewater by continuous electrodeionization (CEDI) was investigated. It is clear that separation of uranium by electrodialysis (ED) has well performance for high feed concentration and it can not be used for dilute effluents because of high electrical resistance of low concentration solutions. One of the best alternative methods to separate heavy metals from dilute solutions is continuous electrodeionization (CEDI). A 3-cell chamber was used for CEDI and the middle part was filled by cation exchange resin. Different initial feed concentrations (50, 100 and 200 ppm) were chosen to run the experiments. The product concentration for all feed solutions was lower than 0.15 ppm. A comparison study between ED and CEDI was carried out for a 500 ppm solution. Results show that CEDI has very good separation percentage for all chosen feed concentration. Therefore, CEDI can be considered as an appropriate process for final treatment (after pretreatment by ED) to achieve a very low contaminated product.