Teledyne Industries, Inc.

Lawrence E Sarbeck

John C Haygarth

William A Crocker

David R Lee

Lawrence J Jacoby

Charles T Goodwin

A process for separating zirconium values from hafnium values wherein an aqueous solution of ZrCl.sub.4 and HfCl.sub.4 is contacted with NH.sub.4 SCN, feeding the resultant solution into a solvent extraction system containing aqueous HCl and MIBK, separating off the solvent phase containing MIBK, HSCN, hafnium thiocyanate complex, and any decomposition products of HSCN to leave the aqueous phase raffinate containing NH.sub.4 Cl, zirconium oxide-chloride and low concentrations of HSCN, scrubbing the hafnium values from the separated solvent phase, treating the scrubbed solvent phase containing MIBK and HSCN with NH.sub.4 OH to convert the HSCN to NH.sub.4 SCN, separating the NH.sub.4 SCN from the treated solvent phase, treating the separated solvent phase to remove essentially all thiazolines, and scrubbing residual HSCN from the raffinate with the desulfurized solvent phase.

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Scio, OR, United States of America

Lawrence E Sarbeck