N,N,N′,N′-Tetra(2-Ethylhexyl) Thiodiglycolamide T(2EH)TDGA: A Promising Ligand for Separation and Recovery of Palladium from High Level Liquid Waste (HLLW) Solutions

The extraction properties of N,N,N',N'-tetra(2-ethylhexyl)thiodiglycolamide T(2EH)TDGA have been evaluated for the separation and recovery of palladium from simulated high-level liquid waste (SHLW). T(2EH)TDGA has shown very high selectivity for Pd (II) over other metal ions present in SHLW. The separation factor (SF) for Pd (II) over other metal ions was found to be more than 105. Reusability studies of the extractant indicate that DPd remained almost constant even after five successive cycles of extraction and stripping. Palladium was quantitatively recovered from thiourea strip solution by treating it with ammonia and filtering the precipitate of palladium sulphide. The acid uptake constant (KH) was found to be 0.62 which could be due to the presence of two carbonyl groups of amidic moiety. To account for very high extractability of palladium with T(2EH)TDGA over other 'S' donor extractants, namely Bis-(2-ethylhexyl)sulphoxide (BESO), FTIR, as well as Raman studies were carried out. FTIR and Raman studies suggested the ligation through carbonyl as well as the thio-ether group. Conditional extraction constants (log K'ex) were determined and the thermodynamic parameters were calculated from the dependence of the conditional extraction constant (log K'ex) on temperature. The calculated values of Gex, Hex, and Sex were -41.78 kJmol-1, -55.12 kJmol-1 and -44.04 JK-1mol-1 respectively. The extraction process is indicated to be enthalpy driven with the entropy factor counteracting it.