Solvent extraction flowsheet-level modeling and simulation with radiolysis

Flowsheet-level models do not account for explicilty coupled models of water, acid, The present work is aimed at developing an extensive flowsheet simulation capability using models for solvent extraction employed in cross-cutting applications in the area of nuclear separations, safeguards, materials protection, special materials for national security and non-proliferation, critical materials, mining, and metallurgy applications. Our approach takes into account participating aqueous, organic, and vapor phases, homogeneous and heterogeneous chemical reactions, coupled with radiolysis and hydrolysis of the aqueous and organic phases. An important enabling component of the current development is the computational framework developed to allow for the dynamic coupling of multiple stages of solvent extraction. This parallel development named Cortix (https://cortix.org [1]) facilitates the time-coupling of multiple contacting stages or multiple contacting banks of typical solvent extraction equipment. The purpose of this communication is to discuss the progress made thus far and to present preliminary results.