Preparation of amidoxime polyacrylonitrile membrane with excellent mechanical strength for adsorption of uranium in simulated wastewater

The effective extraction and recovery of uranium from uranium-containing wastewater are of great significance to environmental protection and the reuse of uranium resources. However, many new methods are generally limited by either sustainability, technical complexity or manufacturing cost. Here we designed an amidoxime polyacrylonitrile membrane (APM) with excellent mechanical strength, high removal efficiency, and low cost for the extraction of uranium from weakly acidic uranium-containing simulated wastewater. The APM was prepared by hydroxylamine hydrochloride modified polyacrylonitrile membrane (PM) with a simple process and mild modification conditions. Batch experiments were performed to explore the adsorption effect of the APM in simulated uranium-containing wastewater and investigate the adsorption mechanism of the adsorption process. The results showed that the APM had a high nitrile conversion rate (43.90 %) and strong mechanical strength (tensile fracture stress was 0.335 MPa) as the modification condition of 60 °C, 30 min. The static adsorption rate of uranium reached 96.96 % in simulated wastewater. The adsorption process was a multi-molecular layer chemical adsorption process, which involved electric charge attraction and ligand exchange. To sum up, this work presented a simple and environmental-friendly preparation method of membrane for effectively extracting uranium from weakly acidic uranium-containing wastewater.