Abstract
Room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) are emerging diluents in solvent extraction processes. Unusual extraction behavior was reported for the extraction of fission products and actinides, when ionic liquids were used as diluents in place of customary diluents. In this report, some of the physical properties of the extractant that have to be met for its use in industrial scale liquid-liquid extraction, such as density, solubility, viscosity, and phase disengagement time were measured for TBP diluted in 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate and compared with the data on 1.1 M TBP/n-dodecane. The results indicate that the RTILs investigated unsuccessfully match n-dodecane in many of the characteristics and thus their practical use, as diluent, in reprocessing seems to be questionable.
