Application of ionic liquid-liquid chromatography (ILLC) to extractions of metals

金属的分离和分离是人类科学努力的首要领域之一。由于地球上的资源有限，特别是贵金属，加上对其使用的需求不断增加，迫切需要能够生产、回收和再利用这些金属的新技术。此外，在电气、电子和核工业中，对镧系元素和榄系元素的需求量也在不断增加。这项建议描述了一种新的通用分离金属化合物和盐的方法的发展。这使得从催化转化器、电子废料甚至从金属矿石中回收的金属能够以纯形式被分离和分离，最终可以重新投入商业使用。金属分离使用离子液体-液体色谱(ILLC)这一新技术，这是逆流色谱(CCC)的一种高级形式，它使用离子液体作为相之一。离子液体(ILS)具有独特的性质，可以克服在分离中使用传统有机溶剂所带来的问题。它们完全由离子组成，在室温或接近室温时是液体，可以溶解各种有机和无机分子，特别是金属盐。重要的是，ILS在环境温度下没有可测量的蒸气压，通常是不可燃的。ILS相对较高的成本阻碍了其在连续大规模系统中的广泛使用。强化技术(需要较少的溶剂)将使ILS的好处得到利用。逆流层析就是这样一种强化技术。由于离子液体的高粘度，离子液体在逆流色谱系统中的应用一直非常有限，通常是在低粘度的溶剂中，这否定了离子液体的目的。奎尔与AECS合作解决了这一限制，生产了一种独特的离子液体-液体色谱系统(ILLC)。在拟议的研究项目中，将研究结合离子液体独特的溶剂性质和ILLC的高性能的创新强化萃取技术，以分离金属(贵金属、稀土、铀)。这项研究将由北爱尔兰的奎尔和伦敦的伦敦大学学院两个团队进行。AECS的参与将加强合作，AECS将根据项目需要设计和制造ILLC工具。ILLC是一种新的高性能分离技术，将在这项联合提案下以两种不同的方式进行研究。奎尔将开展我们对直接金属分离的研究，并将其放大用于商业用途，并设计和生产研究所需的离子液体。UCL将研究ILLC中的流体力学和传质现象，并开发可用于最大化性能的过程预测模型。高速成像和激光诱导荧光(LIF)研究将有助于阐明ILLC分离中的流动和混合模式。诸如流速、仪器参数、离子液体和溶剂的性质和选择等因素如何影响分离，并将进行调查。Quill和UCL的研究结果将结合在一起，为金属分离制定扩大协议，最终目标是开发更有效、能源需求更低、使用更安全、毒性更低的溶剂的分离，这些溶剂目前用于金属分离行业。

The separation of and isolation of metals is one of the first areas of human scientific endeavour. With limited resources on earth, particularly of noble metals together with the ever increasing demand for their use, new technologies that allow them to be produced, recycled and reused are urgently needed. Also, lanthanide and actinide elements are being required in ever increasing quantities in the electrical, electronic and nuclear industries. This proposal describes the development of a new general purpose methodology for the separation of metal compounds and salts. This allows metals recovered from waste such as catalytic converters, electronic scrap, or even from metal ores to be separated and isolated in a pure form that can eventually be put back into commercial use.The metal separations use the new technology of ionic liquid-liquid chromatography (ILLC) which is an advanced form of countercurrent chromatography (CCC), which uses ionic liquids as one of the phases. Ionic liquids (ILs) have unique properties that can overcome the problems associated with the use of conventional organic solvents in separations. They are composed entirely of ions, are liquid at or near room temperature and can dissolve a wide range of organic and inorganic molecules, especially metal salts. Importantly, ILs have no measurable vapour pressure at ambient temperatures and are generally non-flammable. The relatively high costs of ILs have prevented their extensive use in continuous large-scale systems. Intensified technologies (which require less solvent), will allow the benefits of ILs to be exploited. One such intensified technology is counter current chromatography. Because of their high viscosities, the application of ionic liquids in counter current chromatography systems has been very limited and usually in solution in low viscosity solvents, which negates the purpose of the IL. This limitation was solved at QUILL in collaboration with AECS, to produce a unique, ionic liquid-liquid chromatography system (ILLC). In the proposed research project innovative intensified extraction technologies which combine the unique solvent properties of ionic liquids with the high performance of ILLC will be investigated for the separation of metals (noble, lanthanides, uranium). The research will be carried out by two teams which are QUILL in Northern Ireland and UCL in London. The collaboration will be strengthened by the involvement of AECS, which will design and build the ILLC instruments based on the project needs. ILLC is a new high performance separation technology that will be studied under this joint proposal in two separate ways. QUILL will carry our research into the direct metal separations and their scale up for commercial use, and design and produce ionic liquids necessary for the research proposed. UCL will study the hydrodynamic and mass transfer phenomena in ILLC and develop predictive models of the process that can be used to maximise the performance. High speed imaging and Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF) studies will help elucidate the flow and mixing regimes in ILLC separations. Factors such as how flow rates, instrument parameters, ionic liquid and solvent properties and choices affect separations and will be investigated. The results of the QUILL and UCL studies will be combined to generate scale up protocols for metal separations with the ultimate goal of developing separations that are more efficient, have lower energy demand and use safer less noxious solvents that are currently used in the metal separation industry.