image: ORNL's Bruce Moyer is the 2025 winner of the Hanson Medal for internationally recognized excellence in solvent extraction.
Credit: Alonda Hines/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy
Moyer earns Carl Hanson Award for excellence in solvent extraction
Chemist Bruce Moyer, a Corporate Fellow at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has won the 2025 Carl Hanson Award, the highest international recognition for achievement in solvent extraction. The International Solvent Extraction Community bestows the medal every three years based on nominations from the global community.
Solvent extraction is a process that separates a substance from an aqueous solution into a water-insoluble liquid such as kerosene. Moyer’s work in ORNL’s Chemical Sciences Division has addressed herculean separation challenges using this method, from recovery of critical metals to recycling of nuclear fuel and treatment of millions of gallons of nuclear waste. His leadership in separations science and technology advances American energy efficiency, industrial competitiveness and national security.
“Perhaps now ORNL can immodestly claim a dynasty in solvent extraction,” Moyer said. “My mentor, Jack McDowell, won the award in 1993, making ORNL the only institution having garnered two Hanson Awards. In 1962 at Gatlinburg, ORNL hosted the first international meeting in solvent extraction.”
Moyer’s ORNL career spans 46 years. He holds 18 patents, with 11 patent applications pending. He has authored more than 300 publications in the open literature and serves as editor of the journal Solvent Extraction and Ion Exchange and the book series Ion Exchange and Solvent Extraction. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the American Chemical Society and the American Nuclear Society. In 2019, he won the Glenn T. Seaborg Actinide Separations Award.
ORNL’s historic leadership in chemical separations developed landmark processes now widely used by nuclear and chemical industries. Following the Manhattan Project, ORNL scientists invented Plutonium Uranium Redox Extraction (PUREX), which was later refined at the Hanford and Savannah River sites and is now used globally. Amine extraction (AMEX) is now a standard industrial method for recovery of uranium and other metals from acidic solutions derived from ore processing. To recover uranium as a byproduct of phosphate fertilizer production, researchers in the 1960s and 1970s developed DEHPA-TOPO technology, named for two extractants that work together to remove uranium from phosphoric acid solutions. These advances helped shape Moyer’s later accomplishments.
Moyer joined ORNL in 1979 after earning his doctorate in inorganic chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He led the Transuranium Research Laboratory group from 1990 to 1991 and the Chemical Separations group from 1987 to 2020. In 2016, he became an ORNL Corporate Fellow, the lab’s highest recognition of its researchers.
Moyer is well-known for leading the development of Caustic-Side Solvent Extraction (CSSX) and its next-generation process. CSSX removes millions of curies of radioactive cesium-137 from nuclear waste tanks. The $2 billion Salt Waste Processing Facility at DOE’s Savannah River Site applies the method to remediate tens of millions of gallons of waste. The next-generation CSSX process raises the throughput, further reducing environmental risk. It will save taxpayers billions of dollars for DOE’s investment of several tens of millions of dollars. For development of CSSX, Moyer and his team received the 2013 DOE Secretary of Energy Award and the 2024 American Chemical Society Heroes in Chemistry Award.
Moyer has also led three DOE programs: Principles of Chemical Recognition and Transport in Extractive Separations (1987-2018, Office of Science), Sigma Team for Advanced Actinide Recycle (2009-2018, Office of Nuclear Energy) and Diversifying Supply Focus Area of the Critical Materials Innovation Hub (2013-2023, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy). He has appreciated support from the DOE Office of Science for this pioneering work and enabling the spin-off of the new knowledge and insights needed for success of DOE’s applied missions.
Moyer and his teams have advanced techniques for recovering lithium and rare earth elements. They enabled production of an alloy containing cerium, the most abundant rare earth element, to improve critical modern technologies. He also co-developed a resin now used commercially to remove groundwater contaminants, earning an R&D 100 Award in 2004.
In 1986, the United Kingdom Society of Chemical Industry and German Society for Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology jointly created the Hanson medal in memory of Carl Hanson, a professor of chemical engineering at Bradford University in England who died in 1985.
Moyer received the medal Oct. 2 in Melbourne, Australia, at the 2025 International Solvent Extraction Conference.
“It is humbling now to be among the pioneers and leaders in the field,” Moyer said.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the DOE Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science. — Dawn Levy