High effectiveness of pure polydopamine in extraction of uranium and plutonium from groundwater and seawater.
Valery N BliznyukKamila KołacińskaAlexander A PudNikolay A OgurtsovYuriy V NoskovBrian A PowellTimothy A DeVolPublished in: RSC advances (2019)
Sorption properties of polydopamine (PDA) for uranium and plutonium from an aqueous environment are reported at three different pH values (2, 4 and 6.5-7). In addition to deionized (DI) water, artificial groundwater (GW) and seawater (SW) were used with U uptake close to 100% in each case. PDA polymer has been identified as a material with extremely high sorption capacity Q max ∼500 mg g -1 of the polymer at pH 6.5 and high selectivity for uranium. Similar high sorption properties are revealed for plutonium uptake. PDA-uranyl and PDA-plutonium interactions responsible for the observed adsorption processes have been addressed with a set of experimental techniques including FTIR spectroscopy, electron microscopy and cyclic voltammetry.