Fibrous adsorbent containing amidoxime and carboxyl groups and adsorption of uranium

Through introducing amidoxime and carboxyl groups into polyacrylonitrile fiber, a fibrous adsorbent with high capacity and fast adsorption rate was obtained, which could adsorb 4.6 mg uranium/g in 10 days from natural seawater. The influence of the functional group content on equilibrium adsorption capacity X_m and adsorption rate constant K of the adsorbent was studied, thus indicating that the contents of amidoxime and carboxyl groups correlated with X_m and K respectively. It is concluded that the amidoxime group is of reactive adsorption, while the carboxyl group is of promotion in the adsorption of uranium. In this paper, the mechanism of uranium adsorption on the fibrous adsorbent is deduced and the chelating structure of adsorption species is discussed with molecule orbit theory.