Nature and coordination geometry of geologically relevant aqueous Uranium(VI) complexes up to 400 ºC: A review and new data

Abstract

The structure of the uranyl aqua ion (UO22+) and a number of its inorganic complexes (specifically, UO2Cl+, UO2Cl20, UO2SO40, UO2SO422−, UO2CO334− and UO2OH42−) have been characterised using X-Ray absorption spectroscopy/extended X-Ray absorption fine structure (XAS/EXAFS) at temperatures ranging from 25 to 326 ºC. Results of ab initio molecular dynamics (MD) calculations are also reported for uranyl in chloride and sulfate-bearing fluids from 25 to 400 ºC and 600 bar to 20 kilobar (kb). These results are reported alongside a comprehensive review of prior structural characterisation work with particular focus given to EXAFS works to provide a consistent and up-to-date view of the structure of these complexes under conditions relevant to U mobility in ore-forming systems and around high-grade nuclear waste repositories. Regarding reported EXAFS results, average equatorial coordination was found to decrease in uranyl and its sulfate and chloride complexes as temperature rose – the extent of this decrease differed between species and solution compositions but typically resulted in an equatorial coordination number of ∼3–4 at temperatures above 200 ºC. The UO2CO334− complex was observed at temperatures from 25 to 247 ºC and exhibited no major structural changes over this temperature range. UO2OH42− exhibited only minor structural changes over a temperature range from 88 to 326 ºC and was suggested to manifest fivefold coordination with four hydroxyl molecules and one water molecule around its equator. Average coordination values derived from fits of the reported EXAFS data were compared to average coordination values calculated using the experimentally derived thermodynamic data for chloride complexes reported by Dargent et al. (2013) and Migdisov et al. (2018b), and for sulfate complexes reported by Alcorn et al. (2019) and Kalintsev et al. (2019). Sulfate EXAFS data were well described by available thermodynamic data, and chloride EXAFS data were described well by the thermodynamic data of Migdisov et al. (2018b), but not by the data of Dargent et al. (2013). The ab initio molecular dynamics calculations confirmed the trends in equatorial coordination observed with EXAFS and were also able to provide an insight into the effect of pressure in equatorial water coordination – for a given temperature, higher pressures appear to lead to a greater number of equatorially bound waters counteracting the temperature effect.