Teledyne Industries, Inc.

Lawrence J Jacoby

John C Haygarth

William A Crocker

David R Lee

Dorothy P Carter

Ralph H Nielsen

Kenneth C Ash

Lawrence E Sarbeck

Charles T Goodwin

Richard A Rosenau

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.

Zirconium-hafnium separation process

A method of essentially preventing the formation of 3-mercapto-4-methyl-2-pentanone by selectively controlling an ammonium thiocyanate-methyl isobutyl ketone regeneration system by maintaining the pH in the range of 4 to 9, and the temperature below 150.degree. F.

Removal of 3-mercapto-4-methyl-2-pentanone from zirconium/hafnium

Growing community of inventors

Redding, CA, United States of America

Lawrence J Jacoby