Highly efficient adsorptive extraction of uranium from wastewater by novel kaolin aerogel

Ting Xiong; Lingyi Jia; Qichen Li; Yong Zhang; Wenkun Zhu

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.156916

Highly efficient adsorptive extraction of uranium from wastewater by novel kaolin aerogel

Sci Total Environ. 2022 Oct 10:842:156916. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.156916. Epub 2022 Jun 23.

Authors

Ting Xiong¹, Lingyi Jia¹, Qichen Li¹, Yong Zhang², Wenkun Zhu¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Environment-Friendly Energy Materials, Sichuan Co-Innovation Center for New Energetic Materials, National Co-Innovation Center for Nuclear Waste Disposal and Environmental Safety, Nuclear Waste and Environmental Safety Key Laboratory of Defense, School of National Defence Science & Technology, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang 621010, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Environment-Friendly Energy Materials, Sichuan Co-Innovation Center for New Energetic Materials, National Co-Innovation Center for Nuclear Waste Disposal and Environmental Safety, Nuclear Waste and Environmental Safety Key Laboratory of Defense, School of National Defence Science & Technology, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang 621010, China. Electronic address: yongpandm@swust.edu.cn.

PMID: 35753449
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.156916

Abstract

An environment-friendly, low-cost and efficient kaolin aerogel adsorbent (named as KLA) was synthesized via a freeze-drying-calcination method to solve the defect of low uranium removal rate for kaolin (KL). The removal rate of uranium on KLA reached 90.6 %, which was much higher than that of KL (69.2 %) (C₀ = 10 mg L^-1, t = 24 h, pH = 5.0, T = 298 K and m/V = 1.0 g L^-1). The uranium removal behavior on KLA was satisfied with Pseudo-second-order and Langmuir model, which meant that the uranium ions were immobilized on the surface of KLA via chemical reaction. Meanwhile, high temperature was in favor of the removal of uranium on KLA, indicating that the removal process was a spontaneous endothermic reaction. Compared with KL, KLA also presented better cycle ability and its removal rate of uranium was up to 80.5 % after three cycles, which was still higher than that of KL at the first cycle (74.5 %). On basis of the results of SEM, XRD, FT-IR and XPS, it could be concluded that uranium ions were adsorbed by KLA via complexation. Hence, KLA could be regarded as a feasible candidate for the removal of uranium from aqueous solution.

Keywords: Aerogel; Kaolin; Mechanism; Removal; Uranium.

MeSH terms

Adsorption
Hydrogen-Ion Concentration
Ions
Kaolin
Kinetics
Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared
Uranium* / analysis
Wastewater

Substances

Ions
Waste Water
Kaolin
Uranium