Scientists at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (China) conducted the above research and published it in the journal Advanced Functional Materials last month. “The entire preparation process is simple and easy to operate, cost-effective and easy to scale,” they said.
Tianwan nuclear power plant in Jiangsu province (China)
Scientists estimate that land-based reserves of uranium used as fuel in nuclear reactors can only meet nuclear energy needs for a century. And ocean uranium reserves could power the world for more than a millennium. However, extracting ions from seawater faces many barriers because the earth’s oceans have extremely low uranium concentrations, with 1 ton of seawater containing only 3.3 mg of uranium and the presence of many ions mixed in. marine environment.
Besides, decarbonizing the global power grid is very important to achieve emissions reduction goals. One of the measures to realize that is to increase the use of nuclear energy. China currently builds more nuclear power plants than any other country, but its uranium ore is of low quality and has to rely on imports.
To solve the above challenges, the researchers commented: “Exploiting non-traditional uranium sources will bring great benefits to sustainable electricity production.” The research team said that in recent years, the use of highly absorbent materials has become increasingly popular due to their high efficiency, low cost and ease of production.
Accordingly, the research team discovered that polyamidoxime – a polymer material that is highly reactive with metals – has “demonstrated special potential in capturing uranium from natural seawater”. To turn polyamidoxime into a porous and absorbent material, the team used a wax casting method to create hydrogel particles – a hydrophilic polymer.
Polyamidoxime will be dissolved in water, then melted candle wax is poured in and mixed well. After cooling, water is removed from the solidified wax and the extracted wax is collected.
The remaining material is ground into small particles, creating hydrogel particles that have a “distinctive cheese-like morphology” due to many large pores. The team coated the particles in alginate polyacrylic acid – a synthetic polymer with good water-absorbing properties – forming absorbent spheres about 3 mm in diameter.
The obtained particles have high absorption capacity, material reactivity and good selectivity towards uranium ions. According to the researchers, the test results demonstrated the “significant potential” of these particles to capture uranium from natural seawater.
