Abstract
The separation of Li+ from an aqueous solution has received much attention in recent years because of its wide application in batteries and nuclear energy. A cellulose microsphere adsorbent with sulfonic acid groups (named as CGS) was successfully prepared by the pre-irradiation-induced emulsion graft polymerization of glycidyl methacrylate onto cellulose microspheres through subsequent sulfonation and protonation. The adsorption performance of Li+ onto the CGS adsorbent is investigated in detail. The as-prepared CGS adsorbent exhibited fast adsorption kinetics and a high adsorption capacity of Li+ (16.0 mg/g) in a wide pH range from 4 to 10. The existence of K+ and Na+ was found to have the ability to affect the adsorption capacity of Li+ due to the cation-exchange adsorption mechanism, which was further confirmed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The column adsorption experiment indicated that the adsorption capacity of CGS agreed well with the batch adsorption, and a fast desorption could be obtained in 10 min. It is expected that CGS has potential usage in the adsorption separation of Li+ from an aqueous solution.
Highlights
Lithium has been widely studied in recent decades due to its wide applications in lithium secondary batteries [1], catalysts [2], and nuclear energy [3]
Among the processes for lithium separation, such as adsorption, solvent extraction [5,6], precipitation [7] and electrochemical methods [8,9], the adsorption process is considered to be a promising method to separate lithium at a large scale with a high efficiency. Several adsorbents such as lithium manganese oxides (LMOS), ion sieves, H2TiO3 [10], and ion-imprinted polymers [11] have been prepared for the adsorption of lithium
When the cellulose microsphere (CMS) was irradiated by 60Co gamma ray in air, trapped free radicals were generated in the crystalline area of cellulose, and peroxides were formed in the amorphous phase of cellulose due to the presence of oxygen [32], which is very suitable for the grafting of a monomer [24]
Summary
Lithium has been widely studied in recent decades due to its wide applications in lithium secondary batteries [1], catalysts [2], and nuclear energy [3]. Among the processes for lithium separation, such as adsorption, solvent extraction [5,6], precipitation [7] and electrochemical methods [8,9], the adsorption process is considered to be a promising method to separate lithium at a large scale with a high efficiency. Several adsorbents such as lithium manganese oxides (LMOS), ion sieves, H2TiO3 [10], and ion-imprinted polymers [11] have been prepared for the adsorption of lithium. These materials still have some weaknesses such as slow adsorption kinetics, complicated synthetic routes and non-biodegradability, which limit their practical application
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