Bis‐Catecholamide‐Based Materials for Uranium Extraction

Extraction of uranium from seawater constitutes a good alternative to mining but needs to develop solid materials with large adsorption capacity and high selectivity for uranium in presence of competitive cations. The synthesis of CAM fomo-phenolic resins and their copolymerization with phenolic derivatives – mainly with Resorcinol – and formaldehyde have been developed and afford suitable material for cation extraction. This work highlights the development of bis-cathecholamide polymer materials as efficient adsorbents for uranium from seawater.

Abstract

This work reports the synthesis of formo-phenolic resins containing four catecholamide (CAM) moieties with admixture of phenol, catechol or resorcinol. These chelating resins have been developed to selectively extract U(VI) from seawater. This media is a challenging environment due to a pH around 8.2 and a large excess of alkaline and earth-alkaline cations. From the various sorption experiments investigated, the results indicate that the synthesized material exhibit good sorbent properties for U(VI) with uptake capacity about 50 mg/g for the more promising resins with a pronounced selectivity for uranium even under saline conditions. Thermodynamic and kinetic adsorption data were determined for the best resin (Langmuir adsorption model and pseudo-second order model).

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