Comparative Study of Anion Exchange Resins Purolite NRW-6000 and Duolite A-143 by Application Isotopic Technique

Abstract

Isotopic tracer technique using 131I and 82Br was used to characterize Purolite NRW-6000 and Duolite A-143 anion exchange resins. The characterization study was done by carrying out iodide and bromide ion-isotopic exchange reactions taking place between the resin surface and the external labeled ionic solution. For the two resins it was observed that under identical experimental conditions, the values of specific reaction rate (min-1), amount of ion exchanged (mmol) and initial rate of ion exchange (mmol/min) were calculated to be lower for bromide ion-isotopic exchange reaction than that for iodide ion-isotopic exchange reaction. Also during both the ion-isotopic exchange reactions, under identical experimental conditions for the two resins, the values of specific reaction rate increases with increase in ionic concentration and was observed to decrease with rise in temperature. For a constant temperature of 35.0 °C, as the concentration of labeled bromide ion solution increases from 0.001 mol/L to 0.004 mol/L, the percentage of bromide ions exchanged increases from 67.80% to 72.76% using Purolite NRW-6000 resin and from 42.54% to 50.45% using Duolite A-143 resin. However when the temperature was raised from 30.0 °C to 45.0 °C by keeping the concentration of labeled bromide ion solution constant at 0.002 mol/L, the percentage of bromide ions exchanged decreases from 70.68 % to 67.32 % using Purolite NRW-6000 resin and from 47.50% to 42.25% using Duolite A-143 resin. From the results it appears that Purolite NRW-6000 resins show superior performance over Duolite A-143 resins under identical experimental conditions. It is expected that the present isotopic tracer technique can be applied further as an efficient nondestructive technique in characterization of various ion exchange resins so as to bring about their efficient industrial applications.