Biosorption of Actinides from Dilute Waste Actinide Solution by Egg-Shell Membrane

Abstract

Removal of radioactive elements from the effluent and waste aqueous solutions is an important problem. In previous laboratory batch experiments, hen egg-shell membrane (ESM) was stable as an insoluble protein and was very capable of binding heavy metal ions from aqueous solution. Batch laboratory pH profile, time dependency, and capacity experiments were performed to determine the binding of uranium (U) and thorium (Th) to ESM. Batch pH profile experiments indicated that the optimum pH for binding these actinides was approx 6.0 (U) or 3.0 (Th). The adsorption isotherms were developed at pH 5.0 (U) or 3.0 (Th) at 25°C, and the adsorption equilibrium data fitted both Langmuir and Freundlich models. The maximum uptakes by the Langmuir model were about 240 mg U / g and 60 mg Th/ g dry weight ESM. In addition, their adsorption capacities increased as salt concentration increased. ESM could also accumulate uranium from dilute aqueous solution by adjusting to the optimum pH. These results showed that ESM was effective for removing actinides from solution and would be useful in filtration technology to remove actinides from aqueous solution.

Alternative Low-cost Adsorbent for Water and Wastewater Decontamination Derived from Eggshell Waste: An Overview

“…Selective actinide ion recovery from dilute, aqueous waste streams is an important problem. The recovery of uranium (U) and thorium (Th) by various animal biopolymers was examined by Ishikawa and colleagues [121,134]. Of four species of biopolymers tested, a high uptake of uranium (U) and thorium (Th) was found in hen eggshell membrane (ESM) and silk proteins, with the maximum uranium and thorium recovery exceeding 98 and 79%, respectively.…”

Sorption mechanism of Cd(II) from water solution onto chicken eggshell

“…Several authors have investigated the adsorption of actinides, arsenic, phosphate, heavy metals, dyes and chlorinated organic compounds onto powdered eggshell, calcined eggshell, membrane of eggshell, eggshell loaded with iron hydroxide and hydroxyapatite carbonate prepared from eggshell [1,2,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19].…”

Recovery of gold by chicken egg shell membrane-conjugated chitosan beads

“…In fact, the adsorption characteristics of chitosan should be changed slightly by forming bead-type chitosan 8 because several types of water-soluble oligopeptide in ESM should be modified by hydrolysis. 7 However, the adsorption characteristics of ESM-conjugated chitosan beads were almost the same as those of the ESM powder (Fig. 2) in terms of the adsorbability order for heavy metals (data not shown).…”

“…The adsorptions of metal ions to ESM depend strongly on the pH values of the solution. 7 Also, the recovery order of the ESM-chitosan was Au 3ϩ Ͼ Cu 2ϩ Ͼ Ni 2ϩ ϭ Zn 2ϩ Ͼ Co 2ϩ Ͼ Mn 2ϩ , which was almost the same as the other two types of adsorbent. However, the removal efficiency of ESMchitosan was much lower than that of chitosan and ESM powders for all metals expect Au 3ϩ .…”