Since the early 2000s, when the Fray-Farthing-Chen (FFC, direct reduction) and the Ono-Suzuki (OS, indirect reduction) processes on titanium oxide were elucidated, several additional metal oxides (Zr, Ta, Cr, and Nb) have been reported to electrolytically reduce to their metallic state in molten CaCl2-CaO.1-3 However, the electrolytic reduction of cerium oxide has resulted in mixed degrees of success. As such, the goal of this study is to identify side reactions that occur that are parasitic to the overall reaction of producing cerium metal and correlate that to the composition of the salt. Previous reports indicate that the reaction pathway from CeO2 to Ce0 is not direct and includes side reactions that result in the formation of Ce2O3, CeOCl and CeCl3.3-5 Our efforts to use cyclic voltammetry to identify side reactions, which allowed for the determination of approximate concentrations of side reaction products as well as Ce0 produced as a result of electrolysis, will be presented.
Acknowledgements
For financial support of this work, we acknowledge the U.S. Department of Energy through the LANL LDRD Program (Mission Foundations Research Project #20170558ER).
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