Uranium adsorption from Bahariya Oasis leach liquor via TOPO impregnated bentonite material; Isothermal, kinetic and thermodynamic studies

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Nuclear Materials Authority.P.O. Box-530, El Maddi, Cairo, Egypt

2 Department of Chemistry, Quaid-i-Azam University 45320-Islamabad, Pakistan

Abstract

The current study includes the application of cost effective TOPO (tri-n-octylphosphine oxide) impregnated bentonite for efficient uranium adsorption adsorption. Various experimental parameters (pH, time, adsorbent weight, mechanical stirring, uranium concentration and temperature) were thoroughly investigated. The synthesized trioctylphosphine oxide (TOPO) based adsorbent was characterized via XRD, SEM, BET, TGA and FT-IR. The results showed 78.3% uranium adsorption can be achieved under optimized conditions (30 min, TOPO impregnated onto bentonite form 1.87M sulfate leach liquor solution of 250 mg/L at room temperature). The obtained findings fitted well with thermodynamic, isothermal (0<RL<1, favorable adsorption) and pseudo second order kinetics (rate constant 0.20 g/mg min-1). In thermodynamical studies negative sign of (∆G°) specified the spontaneity of process, (∆H°)(endothermic) and positive sign (∆S°) show high randomness after adsorption.

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