Amidoxime polymers for uranium adsorption: Influence of comonomers and temperature

Austin P. Ladshaw, Alexander I. Wiechert, Sadananda Das, Sotira Yiacoumi, Costas Tsouris

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

42 Scopus citations

Abstract

Recovering uranium from seawater has been the subject of many studies for decades, and has recently seen significant progress in materials development since the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has become involved. With DOE direction, the uranium uptake for amidoxime-based polymer adsorbents has more than tripled in capacity. In an effort to better understand how these new adsorbent materials behave under different environmental stimuli, several experimental and modeling based studies have been employed to investigate impacts of competing ions, salinity, pH, and other factors on uranium uptake. For this study, the effect of temperature and type of comonomer on uranium adsorption by three different amidoxime adsorbents (AF1, 38H, AI8) was examined. Experimental measurements of uranium uptake were taken in 1??L batch reactors from 10 to 40 °C. A chemisorption model was developed and applied in order to estimate unknown system parameters through optimization. Experimental results demonstrated that the overall uranium chemisorption process for all three materials is endothermic, which was also mirrored in the model results. Model simulations show very good agreement with the data and were able to predict the temperature effect on uranium adsorption as experimental conditions changed. This model may be used for predicting uranium uptake by other amidoxime materials.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1268
JournalMaterials
Volume10
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 1 2017

Funding

Acknowledgments: This research is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, under Contract No. DEAC05-00OR22725 with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, and at Georgia Tech by the Nuclear Energy University Program under Project 14-6789. The authors are thankful to Mr. Chris Janke of ORNL for providing data on elemental analysis of adsorbent materials. Notice: This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).

Keywords

  • Amidoxime
  • Comonomer
  • Modeling
  • Seawater
  • Temperature effect
  • Uranium adsorption

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