Highly efficient and selective adsorption of palladium(II) from simulated nuclear waste solution using Amberlite XAD-7 resin impregnated with a phenanthroline-derived diamide

Abstract

The increasing demand and limited natural resources for rare precious metal palladium render its separation and recovery from secondary sources such as acidic nuclear liquid waste greatly interesting. Herein, a novel Et-Tol-DAPhen extraction resin was prepared by impregnating Amberlite XAD-7 resin with a phenanthroline-derived diamide extractant N,N′-diethyl-N,N′-ditolyl-2,9-diamide-1,10-phenanthroline (Et-Tol-DAPhen), and the adsorption behavior of this new extraction resin towards Pd2+ in HNO3 solution was investigated through the batch and column experiments. The Et-Tol-DAPhen extraction resin exhibited strong adsorbability, high adsorption capacity, excellent selectivity and good reusability for Pd2+ in highly acidic HNO3 solution. In addition, the pseudo-second-order and Langmuir models were applied to understand the adsorption process of Pd2+ on Et-Tol-DAPhen extraction resin, respectively. It demonstrated the characteristics of a uniform single-layer chemisorption. The maximum uptake capacity could reach as high as 74.6 mg g−1 for Pd2+ in 3.0 mol/L HNO3 solution which is much higher than most adsorbent materials of palladium reported before. Furthermore, Et-Tol-DAPhen extraction resin could selectively uptake Pd2+ from a simulated acidic nuclear waste solution containing 20 different kinds of ions with the separation factor SFPd/M values as high as 100 to 10,000. Moreover, although the adsorption efficiency had a slight decrease after 5 times of adsorption-desorption process, it still remained at a high level. This new extraction resin displayed a potential application prospect in the field of separation and recovery of Pd2+ from acidic nuclear liquid waste.