Experimental study on efficient electrocatalytic reduction of U(VI) at Amine-Amidoxime bifunctional graphite felt electrode

Abstract

• The TETA-PAO/GF electrode material was prepared by a simple and green method. • The TETA-PAO/GF electrode material exhibits excellent electrocatalytic reduction of U(VI) under electric field conditions. • The TETA-PAO/GF electrode material has good selectivity and reusability. • The TETA-PAO/GF electrode material can electrocatalytically reduce U(VI) in real seawater under electric field conditions. The amidoxime-based material is one of the effective materials for adsorbing uranium. The electrocatalysis can be used as an effective strategy for separating uranium. In this study, conductive graphite felt was used as substrate, amination-amidoxime modified polyacrylonitrile (PAN) graphite felt was prepared by heterogeneous method. With the successful synthesis of the material with bifunctional groups, the bifunctional modified PAN graphite felt (TETA-PAO/GF) had good uranium adsorption performance by the way of electrocatalysis technology. It was characterized by SEM, FT-IR, XPS, XRD, ICP-MS, etc. The adsorption capacity of the electrode material to uranium reached 1 142 mgU·g -1 in unsaturated state in 1 000 mg·L -1 spiked seawater. In real seawater adsorption experiment, 90.08% uranium was extracted from 16 L seawater. Ultimately, the assessment of the reusability and ion selectivity of TETA-PAO/GF revealed that it has a certain use value for uranium extraction from seawater.