Investigation of concentration-dependence of thermodynamic properties of lanthanum, yttrium, scandium and terbium in eutectic LiCl-KCl molten salt

•Investigation of activity coefficient, apparent potential and diffusion coefficient at different concentrations.•MD simulation was studied for the calculation of thermodynamic properties of rare earth elements in molten salt.•The present study is a pioneering work focusing on the concentration dependence of thermodynamic properties.

Thermodynamic properties of rare earth metals in LiCl-KCl molten salt electrolyte are crucial to the development of electrochemical separation for the treatment of used nuclear fuels. In the present study, activity coefficient, apparent potential, and diffusion coefficient of lanthanum, yttrium, scandium, and terbium in the molten salt (58 at% LiCl and 42 at% KCl) were calculated by the method of molecular dynamics simulation up to a concentration around 3 at% at temperatures of 723 K and 773 K. It was found that the activity coefficient and the apparent potential increase with the species concentration while diffusion coefficient shows a trend of increase followed by decrease. The calculated results were validated by available measurement data of dilution cases. This research extends the range of data to a wide component and would provide further insight to the pyroprocessing design and safeguards.