A novel zirconium glyphosine carbon nanotube composite for fast and ultraeffective In(Ⅲ) capture

Abstract

Extraction of In(Ⅲ) from the tail liquid of zinc ore which possesses the large amounts of Zn(Ⅱ) and the characteristics of highly acidity, remains a critical challenge. Adsorption method can be considered as an effective and green strategy to recovery In(Ⅲ). However, the adsorption capacity of mostly reported adsorbents is unsatisfactory toward In(Ⅲ) in the acidic environment. In this work, an effective In(Ⅲ) trap is developed by using a mild, simple strategy that introduces zirconium glyphosine coordination networks in situ loaded on carbon nanotube. Benefiting from the characteristics of abundant carboxyl and phosphate groups, excellent hydrophilicity and thermal stability, the resultant zirconium glyphosine carbon nanotube composite (xZrGP-CNT) exhibits remarkable adsorption capacity (193.72 mg g-1) toward In(Ⅲ) under pH 2.5 exceeded most of the reported adsorbents, and its adsorption behavior is consistent with pseudo-second order kinetic and Langmuir isotherm models. In addition, the obtained 2ZrGP-CNT shows prominent kinetics that reaches equilibrium only within 2 h, superior selectivity and excellent regeneration performance for In(Ⅲ) capture, which indicates the highly encouraging potential for the recovery of In(Ⅲ) in practical ore fluids. Our work poses a new way to recovery of In(Ⅲ) under acidic environments with superior adsorption performance and broadens the potential of organocphosphonates for recovering In(Ⅲ).