High surface-area amidoxime-based polymer fibers co-grafted with various acid monomers yielding increased adsorption capacity for the extraction of uranium from seawater

Uranium is dissolved in the ocean at a uniform concentration of 3.34 ppb, which translates to approximately 4-5 billion tons of uranium. The development of adsorbents that can extract uranium from seawater has been a long term goal, but the extremely dilute uranium concentration along with the competition of other metal salts (which are at higher concentrations) has hindered the development of an economical adsorption process. Several acid monomers were co-grafted with acrylonitrile (AN) to help increase the hydrophilicity of the adsorbent to improve access to the metal adsorption sites. Grafting various acid monomers on PE fibers was found to significantly affect the uranium adsorption in simulated seawater in the following order: acrylic acid (AA) < vinyl sulfonic acid (VSA) < methacrylic acid (MAA) < itaconic acid (ITA) < vinyl phosphonic acid (VPA). Interestingly, the uranium adsorption capacity significantly increased when Mohr's salt was added with acrylic acid, most likely due to the reduction of co-polymerization of the monomers. When testing under more realistic conditions, the acid-grafted PE fiber adsorbents were exposed to natural seawater (more dilute uranium), the uranium adsorption capacity increased in the following order: MAA < AA (Mohr's salt) < VSA < ITA (Mohr's salt) < ITA < VPA, which agreed well with the simulated seawater results. Characterization of the adsorbents indicated that the increase in uranium adsorption capacity with each acid monomer was related to higher grafting of AN and therefore a higher conversion to amidoxime (AO).