Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Uranium Recovery from Brine

Date

2022-06-01

Author

Altay, Melike Benan
Kalıpçıoğlu, Ceyda
Kurt, Zöhre

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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With the increase in world population and the associated increase in raw material, clean water and energy demands, seeking for innovative and sustainable methods to decrease human-made environmental footprint becomes a task of utmost importance to reduce emissions and waste generation. Uranium-based atomic energy generation has an enormous potential to efficiently supply energy demand at the cost of high environmental impact on water bodies. Therefore, estimating the environmental impacts of the uranium recovery systems from desalination waste is a necessity. This study assessed the environmental impact of uranium recovery method from brine via AF1 and PAN-AO amidoximated adsorbents and compared them with the conventional uranium mining methods. As a life-cycle impact assessment method International Reference Life Cycle Data System was conducted with 16 impact categories considering cradle to gate analysis. The results for AF1, PAN-AO and all conventional uranium extraction methods showed that recovery of uranium in the long run is more effective than the conventional procedures. The sensitivity analysis results reveal that hydroxylamine, hazardous waste disposal are the most influential parameters during the uranium recovery via adsorbent methods. Comparative analysis between energy sources used in adsorbent recovery processes indicated that solar energy has the lowest environmental impacts among all kinds of energy scenarios. This study concluded that an alternative sustainable industrial process to obtain uranium is actually applicable. Hence, developing a uranium recovery strategy from brine should be considered while uranium mines are under investigation.

Subject Keywords

ACD, Acidification, AF1, Specific Kind of Adsorbent prepared by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Amidoximated Adsorbent, Brine, CC, Climate Change, FET, Freshwater Ecotoxicity, FEU, Freshwater Eutrophication, GHG, Greenhouse Gas, Hazardous Waste, HTC, Human Toxicity, cancer effects, HTNC, HW, Human Toxicity, non-cancer effect, IRE, Ionizing Radiation E (Interim), IRHH, Ionizing Radiation Human Health, LCA, Life Cycle Assessment, LCIA, Life Cycle Impact Assessment, LU, Land Use, MEU, Marine Eutrophication, MFRRD, Mineral, Fossil & Renewable Resource Depletion, OD, Ozone Depletion, PAN-AO, Polyacrylonitrile Amidoximated Adsorbent, PCO, Photochemical Ozone Formation, PM, Particulate Matter, SDG, Sustainable Development Goal, Solar Energy, Sustainability, TEU, Terrestrial Eutrophication, Uranium Recovery, Uranium Recovery from Brine, URFB,Water Resource Depletion, Waste Management, WRD

URI

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85124911594&origin=inward
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/96417

Journal

Resources, Conservation and Recycling

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2022.106237

Collections

Department of Environmental Engineering, Article

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Citation Formats

M. B. Altay, C. Kalıpçıoğlu, and Z. Kurt, “Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Uranium Recovery from Brine,” Resources, Conservation and Recycling, vol. 181, pp. 0–0, 2022, Accessed: 00, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85124911594&origin=inward.