Facile synthesis of functionalized polyglycidyl methacrylate-magnetic nanocomposites for enhanced uranium sorption

Designing and fabricating nanocomposite magnetic sorbents (with more accessible active sites for achieving high sorption capacities, selectivity and rapid kinetics) has become an impending challenge in the removal of radionuclides. Two core-shell multifunctional magnetic-nanocomposites have been prepared suitably to be used as sorbents using facile two-step processes. In the first step, after synthesis of parent PGMA microparticles (by a dispersion polymerization method), the grafting of aminoalkylcarboxylate and aminoalkylphosphonic ligands (via an intermediary amination step of PGMA) allows increasing sorption capacities due to the specific reactivity of carboxylate and phosphonate groups, giving iminodiacetate (IDA-PGMA) and iminodiphosphonate (IDP-PGMA), respectively. In the second step, functionalized-PGMA was ball-milled with pre-formed magnetic nanoparticles using high-energy planetary milling, resulting in a magnetic nanocomposite structure (M-IDA-PGMA and M-IDP-PGMA). These sorbents were characterized by elemental analysis, FTIR, XRD, pH_ZPC, TEM, and VSM. The magnetic nanocomposite sizes were around 10.0 nm. The super paramagnetic properties of the hybrid materials make their solid/liquid separation quite easy using an external magnetic field. These materials were investigated for uranium sorption. Optimum pH was found to be close to 4.0; the maximum monolayer chemisorption capacities reach 122.9 and 147.0 mg g^-1 for M-IDA- and M-IDP-PGMA, respectively. The adsorption activation energies were calculated from the Arrhenius equation. The sorption is spontaneous, endothermic and controlled by entropic change. Sorbents were tested for U(vi) removal from a real acidic leachate of ores collected in the El-Sella mining area. Finally, sodium bicarbonate revealed efficiency for uranium desorption and the re-use of sorbents was successfully tested for five cycles.