Secondarily modified polyamide-based multifunctional adsorbent for efficient removal of U(VI) from radioactive wastewater
摘要
Adsorption has been widely acknowledged as a high-efficiency method for treating uranium-containing wastewater. In this work, a novel polyamide acid (PAA-AO) remodified by amidoxime was designed as uranium(VI) adsorbent, and successfully synthesized by grafting amidoxime (AO) onto a polyamide acid (PAA) backbone via cyanomethyl linkages. The resulting adsorbent containing substantial amide, carboxyl, and amidoxime groups, was utilized to address U(VI) contamination in environmental systems. The adsorption behavior of PAA-AO to U(VI) was fully investigated using batch experiments. The results showed that PAA-AO removed over 75% of U(VI) across the pH range of 4.0 to 7.0, with a maximum capacity of 370.4 mg/g at pH 6.0. The kinetic analysis indicated that the adsorption process conformed to the pseudo-second-order model, while isothermal data were best described by the Langmuir model. Thermodynamic studies confirmed that U(VI) adsorption onto PAA-AO was endothermic and spontaneous. PAA-AO adsorbent displayed the superior selectivity for U(VI) in the presence of competing metal ions. The mechanistic investigations via FT-IR and XPS demonstrated that C = O of carboxyl/malonamide and –NH2 (and/or –NH–) of amidoxime played the key roles in adsorption through strong coordination with U(VI). The proposal of cyanomethylation-secondary-modification provides an effective idea for the design of novel amidoxime-based adsorbent.