Crosslinked Polydiallyldimethylammonium Chloride Adsorbent for the Selective Separation of Rhenium Ions from Pregnant Leach Solutions

Abstract

The depletion of valuable mineral reserves has rendered effluents generated from mining and industrial processing activities a promising resource for the production of precious elements. The synthesis and improvement of new adsorbents to extract valuable compounds from industrial wastes and pregnant leach solutions, besides increasing wealth, can play a significant role in reducing environmental concerns. In this work, a new and low-cost adsorbent for the selective extraction of rhenium (perrhenate ions, ReO4−) was synthesized by the free-radical polymerization (FRP) of a diallyl dimethylammonium chloride monomer (quaternary amine) in the presence of a crosslinker. Various methods were employed to characterize the polymeric adsorbent. The results revealed that the designed polymeric adsorbent had a high surface area and pores with nano-metric dimensions and a pore volume of 6.4 × 10−3 cm3/g. Four environments—single, binary, multicomponent, and real solutions—were applied to evaluate the adsorbent’s performance in the selective separation of Re. Additionally, these environments were used to understand the behavior of molybdenum ions, the primary competitors of perrhenate ions in the ion exchange process. In competitive conditions, using variations in qe,mix/qe, an antagonism phenomenon (qe,mix/qe < 1) occurred due to the inhibitory effect of surface-adsorbed molybdenum ions on the binding of the perrhenate ions. However, across all conditions, the separation values for Re were higher than those for the other studied elements (Mo, Cu, Fe).