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To prepare amidoxime (AO) adsorbents for uranium recovery from seawater, the optimum conditions for graft polymerization and amidoximation of acrylonitrile (AN) group and alkaline treatment of the AO group have been investigated in terms of the uranium adsorption capacity. AN has been grafted onto polypropylene (PP) fabric by photoirradiation‐induced graft polymerization with benzophenone as the photoinitiator. A concentration of AN ≤1.0M, a photoirradiation time of 2 h, and a reaction temperature of 60°C proved to be optimal for the grafting of AN onto PP. The grafted AN groups were effectively converted into AO groups upon reaction with ≥5.0% (w/v) hydroxylamine solution at pH 7.0−9.0 for ≥16 h at 60−80°C. Although widely used for this purpose, we have shown that methanol is not an essential solvent for the amidoximation reaction. Conditioning of the AO group with KOH solution (alkaline treatment) proved to be effective for enhancing the uranium adsorption capacity of amidoximated PP‐g‐AN‐AO fabric, which increased logarithmically with the conditioning time. The AO group density in the PP‐g‐AN‐AO fabric increased linearly with the degree of AN grafting, whereas the uranium adsorption capacity of PP‐g‐AN‐AO fabric conditioned with KOH reached a maximum at a degree of AN grafting of approximately 60%. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2012

We improved photoinduced graft polymerization by absorbing the monomer solution onto the substrate (Ab-type) instead of immersing the substrate in the monomer solution (Im-type) before photoirradiation to yield a more practical and effective grafting system. With this system, acrylic acid (AA) was effectively grafted onto polypropylene (PP) nonwoven fabric. The maximum degree of grafting obtainable was restricted by the amount of monomer preabsorbed onto the PP fabric. However, we effectively enhanced the degree of grafting by increasing the monomer concentration, adding trimethylolpropane triacrylate (TMPTA) to the monomer solution, and repeating the photoirradiation with supplementation of the monomer solution. The net availability of the monomer for graft polymerization was 50% or greater; this increased to 90% or greater with the addition of TMPTA and was much higher than for conventional Im-type photografting ( 13%). Fourier transform infrared spectra, scanning electron microscopy morphology observations, and the adsorption-regeneration properties confirmed that the PP-g-AA fabric prepared by the improved Ab-type photografting method had comparable qualities to those of fabric prepared by conventional Im-type photografting. Thus, the improved Ab-type photografting system provides potential for the preparation of graft adsorbents on a large scale at a competitive cost with a continuous reactor, such as a conveyer belt system, instead of a batch reactor.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the applicability of adsorption models for understanding the thermodynamic properties of adsorption process. For this study, the adsorption isotherm data of NO3-N ion onto a commercial anion exchange resin obtained at various experimental conditions, i.e. different initial concentrations of adsorbate, different dosages of adsorbent, and different temperatures, were used in calculating the thermodynamic parameters and the adsorption energy of adsorption process. The Gibbs free energy change (ΔG o ) of adsorption process could be calculated using the Langmuir constant bM as well as the Sips constant, even though the results were significantly dependant on the experimental conditions. The thermodynamic parameters such as standard enthalpy change (ΔH o ), standard entropy change (ΔS o ) and ΔG o could be calculated by using the experimental data obtained at different temperatures, if the adsorption data well fitted to the Langmuir isotherm model and the plot of ln b versus 1/T gives a straight line. As an alternative, the empirical equilibrium constant(K) defined as qe / Ce could be used for evaluating the thermodynamic parameters instead of the Langmuir constant. The results from the applications of D-R model and Temkin model to evaluate the adsorption energy suggest that the D-R model is better than Temkin model for describing the experimental data, and the availability of Temkin model is highly limited by the experimental conditions. Although adsorption energies determined using D-R model show significantly different values depending on the experimental conditions, they were sufficient to show that the adsorption of NO3-N onto anion exchange resin is an endothermic process and an ion-exchange process.