Selective recovery of rhenium from the simulating leaching solutions of uranium ore by amino guanidine functionalized microcrystalline cellulose microsphere

Abstract

Rhenium (Re) is the rarest metallic element. Re recovery from leaching solution of uranium ore can not only expand the Re resource, but also improve the mining value of uranium ore. In this paper, amino guanidine functionalized cellulose (AGfC) was successfully synthesized and employed as material for effective and selective separation of Re. The adsorption behavior of AGfC toward Re was systematically investigated with batch and fix-bed column experiments. The results demonstrated that the adsorption kinetics were followed by the pseudo-second-order kinetic model. The adsorption isotherm was followed by the Langmuir model, which calculated a maximum adsorption capacity of 264.55 mg/g at pH 2.37. The fix-bed column tests revealed that the Thomas model and Yoon-Nelson model can best describe the column adsorption data. Especially, AGfC can effectively and selectively separate trace ReO4– from the simulated underground leaching solutions of uranium ore. Furthermore, AGfC can be effectively regenerated by HCl or HNO3. FTIR and XPS analyses showed that the adsorption mechanism of ReO4– was the hydrogen bond and the electrostatic interaction by the positive charge of AGfC.