Polymeric beads containing Cyanex 923 for actinide uptake from nitric acid medium: Studies with uranium and plutonium

Conventional phase inversion technique has been successfully applied for the preparation of the solid phase extractant (SPE), Cyanex 923 loaded polymer beads. Two types of polymer beads prepared by blending Polyetherether ketone with card (PEEKWC)/DMF with 5% Cyanex 923 (SPE-I, av bead size: 900 μm) and 10% Cyanex 923(SPE-II, av. bead size: 1100 μm) were evaluated for the uptake of actinide ions. The polymer beads were characterized by various physical methods such as thermal analysis, surface morphology analysis by SEM, EDAX techniques, etc. The polymer beads were used for the experiments involving the uptake of both U(VI) and Pu(IV) at tracer scale and U(VI) at milli molar concentrations from nitric acid feeds. The actinide ion uptake studies involved kinetics of metal ion sorption, adsorption isotherms, and column studies. The metal sorption capacities for U(VI) at 3 M HNO3 were found to be 38.8 ± 1.9 mg and 54.5 ± 1.7 mg per g of SPE-I and SPE-II, respectively. The sorption isotherm analysis with Langmuir, D–R and Freundlisch isotherms indicated chemisorption monolayer mechanism. Column studies were also carried out using 4.5 mL bed volume columns containing about 0.4 and 0.45 g of SPE-I and SPE-II, respectively. The breakthrough profiles were obtained for U(VI) and the elution profiles were obtained using 1 M Na2CO3 as the eluent.