The development can be used in the nuclear industry
A sorbent for water purification and “extraction” of rare earth elements from it was created by a group of scientists from Russia, Belarus and China.
As reported by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, specialists from the Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) worked together with colleagues from the Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus and the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics (China). Their joint article was published in the scientific journal Separation and Purification Technology.
Aluminosilicates exist in nature – compounds that gave scientists the idea to create an artificial sorbent. They created a synthetic analogue of aluminosilicates, which has a porous structure, based on inorganic metal salts. The production technology, which is the know-how of the developers, allows you to change key characteristics – composition and structure of the initial sorbent depending on its field of application.
We are working with the synthesized sorbent. Provided by FEFU
As a result, the synthesized material turned out to be more effective than the natural one. In particular, the latter is inferior in sorption efficiency, since it does not have a strictly ordered structure, and also contains unnecessary impurities.
The new substance can purify water more effectively, concentrating heavy metals, radionuclides and rare earth elements from aqueous solutions.
This is how a scientific laboratory is working on creating a sorbent. FEFU.
At FEFU we were told how the sorbent is used. This dry powder, the granules of which have a microspherical structure, is dissolved in water. If it contains particles of heavy metals, they precipitate on these microgranules. This is how the water is purified. But the sediment can be used again, — dried and extracted from it metal ions: lead, cesium, strontium, cobalt, lanthanum, etc. The development can be used in the nuclear industry to purify water from the reactor.
It happens that more valuable components are dissolved in water, for example, rare earth metals, a gram of which costs tens of thousands of dollars (for example, 1 gram of scandium costs 20 thousand dollars). The sorbent can attract them too.
Courtesy of FEFU
– Synthetic sorbents are being actively studied by the global scientific community as promising materials for purifying various aqueous solutions from pollutants and isolating valuable, sought-after components, – explains the head of the laboratory of nuclear technologies at the Institute of Science-Intensive Technologies and Advanced Materials of the Far Eastern Federal University, Evgeniy Papynov. – We can control their key properties, that is, pre-program a set of optimal characteristics of the sorbent, making it universal not only for use, but also for subsequent disposal of waste material. For example, a sorbent can be used to purify water from highly toxic metals and radionuclides or serve as a “storage” for waste. rare elements dissolved in trace quantities, which opens up opportunities for their further beneficial use.