Home> Scientific Research

HNU research group reports new uranium adsorbent in top journal

Updated: 2021-09-14

Recently, the research group lead by Professor Yin Xueqiong from Hainan University's (HNU) School of Chemical Engineering and Technology reported a new type of uranium adsorbent in the Chemical Engineering Journal

The uranium adsorbent shows good temperature responsiveness, shrinks in volume when the temperature is raised, and selectively adsorbs UO22+ ions, with an adsorption capacity of up to 205.99 mg/g. After simply washing the adsorbents with cold water, the desorption efficiency can reach 97.21 percent, and the resource consumption and environmental hazards caused by other types of adsorbents that need to be acid pickled are avoided.

Uranium is a key raw material for the production of clean energy—nuclear fission energy. Seawater contains about 4.5 billion metric tons of uranium, and extracting uranium from the seawater is expected to be an effective way to solve the shortage of uranium resources in the future. The adsorption method is easy to operate and is inexpensive. It also has various adsorption materials, and is considered to be the most promising method for industrial applications.

Master students Tang Liwen and Ren Shaobo of the School of Chemical Engineering are the first co-authors of the research report. Professor Yin from HNU and Dr. Suying Wei of Lamar University are the corresponding co-authors. This research was funded by the  scientific and technological cooperation direction project of Hainan provincial key research and development plan.