Abstract
A novel ligand-functionalized adsorbent material was prepared using a combination of radiation-induced graft polymerization (RIGP) and click chemistry (1,3 cycloaddition reaction). The design of the ligand-containing amidoxime functionality is based on its chelating efficiency with uranium. In this process, RIGP is used to graft polymer chains on fiber substrates, where the fibers are prepared by irradiating and treating polyethylene (PE) with different bulk ratios of vinyl benzyl chloride and acrylic acid or itaconic acid. Furthermore, chemical modifications of these fibers are performed using a two-step process, where novel bisimidoxime ligands are incorporated into fibers. These ligands contain imidedioxime, which is known to be a uranophile. Also, the core structure of the ligand containing three donor atoms facilitates the formation of chelate with uranyl ion in media such as seawater. Density functional theory calculations were performed to quantify the binding strength with the uranyl ion. When tested with simulated seawater with a uranium concentration of 6 ppm at pH 8.0-8.3, the developed materials showed moderate to high uranium (~35.50 g U/kg adsorbent) adsorption capacity.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 4161-4169 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue number | 15 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 16 2015 |
Funding
This research was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed by UT-Battelle, LLC and used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC02-05CH11231. This research was sponsored by the US Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed by UT-Battelle, LLC. Notes This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide 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). The authors declare no competing financial interest.