AI Article Synopsis
- Large-scale uranium extraction from seawater is essential for nuclear power but faces challenges.
- A novel Zn-poly(amidoxime) (PAO) hydrogel is created that effectively adsorbs uranium by utilizing zinc ions to enhance hydrophilicity and PAO content.
- The hydrogel shows remarkable uranium adsorption capabilities, reaching up to 1188 mg/g in lab conditions and 9.23 mg/g after just 4 weeks in natural seawater, suggesting a promising approach for efficient uranium extraction.
Article Abstract
Large-scale uranium extraction from seawater is a crucial but challenging part of nuclear power generation. In this study, a new ion-crosslinked supramolecular Zn -poly(amidoxime) (PAO) hydrogel that can super-efficiently adsorb uranium from seawater is explored. By simply mixing two solutions of zinc chloride and PAO, a supramolecular Zn -PAO hydrogel is achieved via the interaction between zinc cations and amidoxime anions. In contrast with existing amidoxime-functionalized hydrogel-based adsorbents having low PAO contents and fiber-based adsorbents with weak hydrophilicity, the PAOs can be directly crosslinked using a small quantity of superhydrophilic zinc ion. Thus, a supramolecular hydrogel is formed, having both a high content of well-dispersed PAOs and good hydrophilicity. Relative to reported adsorbents, this low-cost hydrogel membrane exhibits outstanding uranium adsorption performance, reaching 1188 mg g of M /M in 32 ppm uranium-spiked water. More importantly, after immersion in natural seawater for only 4 weeks, the uranium extraction capacity of the Zn -PAO hydrogel membrane reaches 9.23 mg g of M /M . This work can provide a general strategy for designing a new type of supramolecular hydrogel, crosslinked by various bivalent/multivalent cation-crosslinkers and even many other superhydrophilic supramolecular crosslinkers, for the high-efficient and massive extraction of uranium from seawater.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adma.201906615 | DOI Listing |
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