A green attapulgite bacterial cellulose imprinted aerogel for selective adsorption and recovery of Dy(III)

Abstract

Recycling dysprosium (Dy) from an environment can not only alleviate the industrial crisis, but also reduce the ecological pollution caused by Dy(III). The cost of the materials used to adsorb rare earth ions is generally high, which is not conducive to the wide application of adsorbents in the rare earth industry. Herein, we developed an inexpensive adsorbent based on a three-dimensional network structure consisting of carboxylated bacterial cellulose, attapulgite, and gelatin to replace high-priced adsorbents. A low-cost and green I-APT-GT-OBC aerogel was prepared by a simple freeze-drying process. To test the adsorption properties of the composite aerogel, we carried out a series of adsorption experiments. The results showed that the saturated adsorption capacity of Dy(III) by the imprinted aerogel was 48.762 mg g−1 when the pH value was 5.0, and the adsorption process was spontaneous, endothermic and entropy increasing. In the competitive adsorption experiment, the Kd value of I-APT-GT-OBC for Dy(III) was 4084.40 mL g−1, which was much higher than that of other aerogels, showing excellent selective adsorption. In conclusion, I-APT-GT-OBC is expected to be a low-cost adsorbent that can efficiently adsorb Dy(III) in water.