Removal of cesium ion in aqueous solution using immobilized sericite beads

Abstract

To apply sericite effectively in the adsorption process, it was immobilized by entrapment method using sodium alginate. Since the immobilized sericite beads have excellent mechanical strength and swelling characteristics, channeling of flow and the increase of pressure drop were not observed through column operations. In addition, it was also stable under pH 10 and 45 °C of cesium solution. The maximum adsorption capacity and Langmuir adsorption constant was 1.430mg/g and 2.329 L/mg, respectively, at initial pH 5 of cesium solution in batch type and the Langmuir model with higher correlation coefficient of 0.997 fits experimental data better than Freundlich model. The breakthrough point emerged around 15 (1.0 mL/min) and 20 bed volumes (0.5 mL/min), and the cesium ions bound to the immobilized sericite beads were readily released and quantitatively recovered by a few bed volumes of 1.0M of HNO3 solution. Furthermore, bed volumes of cesium ions for firstly reused sericite beads can be still maintained as 18, which shows good regeneration ability.