Powder-based adsorbents having high adsorption capacities for recovering dissolved metals and methods thereof
AssigneeUT-Battelle, LLC
InventorsChristopher J. Janke, Sheng Dai, Yatsandra Oyola
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Abstract
A powder-based adsorbent and a related method of manufacture are provided. The powder-based adsorbent includes polymer powder with grafted side chains and an increased surface area per unit weight to increase the adsorption of dissolved metals, for example uranium, from aqueous solutions. A method for forming the powder-based adsorbent includes irradiating polymer powder, grafting with polymerizable reactive monomers, reacting with hydroxylamine, and conditioning with an alkaline solution. Powder-based adsorbents formed according to the present method demonstrated a significantly improved uranium adsorption capacity per unit weight over existing adsorbents.
Claims6
A method for forming a powder-based adsorbent for the recovery of metal ions from an aqueous solution, the method comprising:
- exposing a polymer fiber to ionizing radiation, the polymer fiber defining a mean diameter of less than 15 microns;
- co-grafting polymerizable monomers containing nitrile and hydrophilic groups onto the irradiated polymer fiber to form grafted side chains;
- reacting the nitrile groups in the grafted side chains with a reagent to convert the nitrile groups into amidoxime groups;
- conditioning the polymer fiber with an alkaline solution;
- and
- grinding the co-grafted polymer fiber into polymer granules to form a powder-based adsorbent having grafted side chains with amidoxime groups.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.