Recovery of uranium from seawater. VI. Uranium adsorption ability and stability of macroporous chelating resin containing amidoxime groups prepared by the simultaneous use of divinylbenzene and ethyleneglycol dimethacrylate as crosslinking reagent

Abstract

AbstractMacroporous chelating resins (RNH‐DVB‐1G) containing amidoxime groups with various degrees of crosslinking were synthesized by varying the amount of divinylbenzene (DVB) and ethyleneglycol dimethacrylate (1G). It was confirmed that the content of amidoxime group decreased with an increase in the degree of crosslinking. On the other hand, the amount of amidoxime group hydrolyzed by acid treatment showed a tendency to decrease with an increase in degree of crosslinking. From the measurement of specific surface area and pore size distribution, it was found that the macropore of RNH‐DVB‐1G with the same degree of crosslinking was remarkably affected by the composition of crosslinking reagent (DVB and 1G). The RNH‐DVB‐1G prepared in the present work were applied to the recovery of uranium from seawater. It was found that the uranium adsorption ability of RNH‐DVB‐1G with the same degree of crosslinking was remarkably affected by the proportion of DVB and 1G, although each RNH‐DVB‐1G had the same content of amidoxime group. In the case of RNH‐DVB‐1G prepared with 25 mol% of crosslinking reagent, the resin prepared with 10 mol% of DVB and 15 mol% of 1G showed the high adsorption ability for uranium in seawater. These results indicate that the simultaneous use of DVB and 1G contributes to the formation of effective macropore and micropore for recovery of uranium from seawater and the increase of chemical and physical stability.