Abstract
Adsorbents with highly efficient and selective recovery performance towards uranium are significantly demanded for the sustainable nuclear power production. Herein, poly(amidoxime)-graft-magnetic chitosan (P(AO)-g-MC) was synthesized through functionalizing magnetic chitosan with polyacrylonitrile followed by amidoximation process. Under magnetic field, P(AO)-g-MC can be separated from the solution in 10 s. Owing to the strong affinity of high-density amidoxime groups towards uranium, P(AO)-g-MC showed remarkable adsorption capacity, rapid kinetics and good regeneration performance in uranium spiked aqueous solution. Notably, the 7-day uranium adsorption capacity of P(AO)-g-MC from natural seawater in column mode was up to 5.14 mg/g, 12 times that of vanadium. The excellent uranium uptake performance over vanadium originated from the strong coordination by N and O in amidoxime groups according to theoretical simulation. The advantages of easy separating and high selectivity make P(AO)-g-MC a very potential uranium adsorbent in natural seawater.
Published Version
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