Innovative seawater uranium recovery agent based on low-cost polyacrylonitrile fibers.

An innovative seawater uranium adsorbent was prepared from the low-cost and commercially-available polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fibers. The optimum condition to synthesize the adsorbent was to irradiate the PAN fibers with 100 kGy gamma ray, amidoximate in 3 (w/v)% hydroxylamine hydrochloride solution for 75 min at 75 °C, yielding the PAN nitrile group conversion of approximately 60%. At 100 kGy, the degree of crystallinity of the irradiated fibers was also highest at 79.