Lamellar structure silver sulfide nanoparticles for adsorption and selective separation of zirconium, yttrium and strontium ions

This work is devoted to the preparation and characterization of silver sulfide (Ag2S) nanoparticles and used as an adsorbent for the separation and purification of Zr(IV), Y(III), and Sr(II) as a simulation mode for the purification of 89Zr from its parents (Y or Sr) and separation of 90Y from its parent Sr using batch and dynamic conditions. N2 adsorption-desorption isotherm for Ag2S is of type IV with a specific surface area (222 ± 0.4 m2/g). The surface is homogeneous texture in which connected channels of diameter 8.3 µm with embedded lamellar structures and the average nanoparticle sizes of 42 ± 3 nm. Ag2S nanoparticles sorbent material shows high selectivity for Zr(IV) from 0.01 M HCl with fast kinetics while 67.2% of Y(III) was removed at pH 4.5 and Sr(II) ions are nil. The adsorption process is exothermic and the intra-particle diffusion and film diffusion were involved in the adsorption mechanism. Also, the separation process was achieved using the column technique with a purity of 100% using different concentrations of HNO3 as eluent. Silver sulfide as an adsorbent material shows a promising potential with high sensitivity for separation and purification trace of Zr, Y, and Sr ions.