Australia's Olympic Dam (OD) is the world's largest source of uranium. Three major forms of uranium containing minerals are present in the OD deposit, tetravalent and hexavalent uraninite, coffinite and brannerite. Currently uranium is extracted from these minerals using a series of processes (grinding, acid dissolution, extraction). Of the minerals present brannerite is clearly the most resistant to acid dissolution and a significant portion of the uranium in this mineral is not recovered using current processes. Recent increases in the price of uranium however have led to interest in understanding the dissolution of brannerite.

In this study we have investigated the synthesis of brannerite, a titanate mineral (UTi₂O_{6). Many preparative methods such as ceramic techniques, mechano-chemical and the alkoxide/ nitrate method are currently used to prepare brannerites. These techniques involve thorough grinding of mixtures of uranium and titanium compounds and heating at temperatures as high as 1450 ^oC. In this study we report a new and simple, relatively low temperature solution based method to prepare brannerite. Uranium and titanium species in solution were co-precipitated in an alkaline solution and heated to various temperatures to follow the development of brannerite formation. The synthesised brannerites were used to conduct fundamental dissolution studies which involved investigating the influence of key test parameters including sulphuric acid concentration, temperature, oxidation-reduction potential (ORP) and particle size. Dissolution results were also compared using characterisation data obtained from brannerite prepared using different methods.}