Can Carbon Be an Anode for Electrochemical Reduction in a LiCl-Li2O Molten Salt?

Electrochemical reduction of UO2 in a LiCl-Li2O molten salt using a C anode was investigated. Possible reduction and oxidation reactions were characterized. UO2 was reduced to U metal but the reduction yield decreased after the repeated use of an electrolyte. CO32-formation and its decomposition to C caused the lowering of current efficiency. The problem of dissolved CO32-should be addressed for the application of C anodes for the metal production in a LiCl-Li2O molten salt. c The Author(s) 2014. Published by ECS. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse of the work in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. All rights reserved.