Phosphination of amino-modified mesoporous silica for the selective separation of strontium

Shichang Zhang; Qunying Huang; Lifeng Chen; Yilai Zhong; Fengtao Hu; Kun Wu; Xiangbiao Yin; Mohammed F Hamza; Yuezhou Wei; Shunyan Ning

doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2024.133741

Phosphination of amino-modified mesoporous silica for the selective separation of strontium

J Hazard Mater. 2024 Apr 5:467:133741. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2024.133741. Epub 2024 Feb 7.

Authors

Shichang Zhang¹, Qunying Huang², Lifeng Chen³, Yilai Zhong⁴, Fengtao Hu⁴, Kun Wu⁴, Xiangbiao Yin³, Mohammed F Hamza³, Yuezhou Wei⁵, Shunyan Ning⁶

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Nuclear Energy Safety Technology, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, PR China; University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, PR China.
² Institute of Nuclear Energy Safety Technology, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, PR China; University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, PR China. Electronic address: qunying.huang@inest.cas.cn.
³ School of Nuclear Science and Technology, University of South China, Hengyang 421001, PR China.
⁴ School of Resources, Environment and Materials, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, PR China.
⁵ School of Nuclear Science and Technology, University of South China, Hengyang 421001, PR China; School of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, PR China.
⁶ School of Nuclear Science and Technology, University of South China, Hengyang 421001, PR China. Electronic address: ningshunyan@usc.edu.cn.

PMID: 38341887
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2024.133741

Abstract

Radioactive strontium (⁹⁰Sr) is considered as one of the most dangerous radionuclides due to its high biochemical toxicity. For the efficient and selective separation of Sr from acidic environments, a novel functional adsorbent CEPA@SBA-15-APTES was prepared in this work through the phosphorylation of amino-modified mesoporous silica with organic content of approximately 20 wt%. CEPA@SBA-15-APTES was characterized by TEM, SEM, EDS, TG-DSC, BET, FTIR, and XPS techniques, revealing its characteristics of an ordered hexagonal lattice-like structure and rich functional groups. The experimental results demonstrated that the adsorbent exhibited good adsorption capacity for Sr over a wide acidity range (i.e., from 10^-10 M to 4 M HNO₃). The adsorption equilibriums of Sr by CEPA@SBA-15-APTES in 10^-6 M and 3 M HNO₃ solutions were reached within 30 and 5 min, respectively, and the adsorption capacities at 318 K were 112.6 and 71.8 mg/g, respectively. Furthermore, by combining the experimental and characterization results, we found that the adsorption mechanism consisted of ion exchange between Sr(II) and H⁺ (in P-OH) in the 10^-6 M HNO₃ solution and coordination between the Sr(II) and oxygen-containing (CO and P = O) functional groups in the 3 M HNO₃ solution.

Keywords: Adsorption; Column experiment; Coordination; SBA-15; Strontium.