Uranium Recovery from Seawater Using Amidoxime-Based Braided Polymers Synthesized from Acrylic Fibers

Alexander I. Wiechert, Austin P. Ladshaw, Li Jung Kuo, Horng Bin Pan, Jonathan Strivens, Nicholas Schlafer, Jordana R. Wood, Chien Wai, Gary Gill, Sotira Yiacoumi, Costas Tsouris

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Scopus citations

Abstract

Global demand for nuclear energy is expected to rise in the coming decades. To meet these growing needs, new uranium resources must be explored. One of the potential alternatives to traditional uranium mining is oceanic uranium. The capture and recovery of uranium from the ocean have been under investigation for some time, with many recent studies focused on amidoxime-based adsorbents. These adsorbents, while able to achieve high uranium recovery capacities, are, nevertheless, expensive to produce and adsorb a significant amount of hard-to-remove vanadium. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the adsorption performance of amidoxime-based polymer braids synthesized from acrylic fibers that are designed to significantly cut polymer synthesis and conditioning costs. Adsorption experiments were performed in a mesoscale recirculating raceway flume system at environmental conditions, approximately 10.8 °C, with 40-μm prefiltered seawater over 28 days for small- and large-sized polymer braids. For both braid sizes, the adsorption of vanadium was far lower on the acrylic adsorbent considered in the present study than on previously tested adsorbents developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL AF1 and AI8). The small acrylic braids also outperformed both ORNL materials with respect to uranium adsorption under similar conditions. Adsorption modeling was used to simulate the performance at higher temperatures based on 20 °C experiments previously performed with these materials. Simulation results indicated that the small acrylic braids would have a somewhat less significant advantage with respect to uranium adsorption over both ORNL AF1 and AI8 at 20 °C and will continue to outperform both ORNL adsorbents at 31 °C. Vanadium adsorption on the small acrylic braids was less than one-third of the vanadium adsorption on either AF1 or AI8 for all temperatures. This behavior indicates that the newly developed acrylic adsorbents are able to achieve superior uranium adsorption compared to other amidoxime adsorbents previously developed while being cheaper to produce and adsorbing significantly less vanadium.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)13988-13996
Number of pages9
JournalIndustrial and Engineering Chemistry Research
Volume59
Issue number31
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 5 2020

Funding

This work was sponsored by the US Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy. The PNNL effort was performed under Contract DE-AC05-76RL01830. Work at ORNL was performed under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. Work at Georgia Tech was supported by the Nuclear Energy University Program under Project 14-6789. Development of the LCW materials was supported by the DOE-SBIR program under grant number DE-SC0013731. 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). This work was sponsored by the US Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy. The PNNL effort was performed under Contract DE-AC05-76RL01830. Work at ORNL was performed under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. Work at Georgia Tech was supported by the Nuclear Energy University Program under Project 14-6789. Development of the LCW materials was supported by the DOE-SBIR program under grant number DE-SC0013731. 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 ).

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