Introduction

Radionuclides of 134Cs and 137Cs with the half-lives of 2 and 30 years, respectively, belong to the main long-lived fission products of 235U. These radionuclides undergo radioactive decays with the emission of beta particles and relatively strong gamma radiation. Cesium salts, the most common form of the element easily dissolved in water, causes a serious hazard if an accident appears with a nuclear reactor, such as that occurred, at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986 and the last big accident in 2011 at Fukushima, Japan, where thousands of cubic meters of sea water was used to cool reactor [1]. The cesium radionuclides that escaped into the environment are a serious threat to the health of present and future generations. Many years of observation after Chernobyl catastrophe indicates that leakage of 137Cs increases the risk of radioactive exposure of population because cesium isotopes could accumulate in mushrooms [2], lichens [3], mosses [4] and in higher plants such as grasses, ferns, heathers and blueberries [5] from which can be directly or indirectly transferred to other living organisms, including humans. When 137Cs enters into the organism, it allows the radioactive material to be dispersed throughout the body with higher concentration in muscle tissues. Therefore, serious attention has been paid to the removal and separation of 137Cs from radioactive waste solution in an economical and safe manner.

Various approaches and technologies such as co-precipitation with ferrocyanides [6] and ammonium molybdophosphates [7], solvent extraction with dicarbollylcobaltate(III) [8], macrocyclic ethers [9] and ion exchange have been developed for separation and immobilization of radioactive aqueous wastes generated at different stages of nuclear fuel cycles. In the case of ion exchangers many inorganic sorbents, such as ferrocyanides of transition metal cations [10], ammonium molybdophosphate [11], zeolites [12], clay minerals [13], titanium dioxides [14], sodium titanates [15] and zirconium phosphates [16] have been systematically studied for separation of 137Cs from nuclear waste water and safe disposal of the exchanged cations. The advantage of this approach is the ability of these materials to withstand intense radiation and elevated temperatures in addition to their high selectivity for Cs+ ions.

Nanostructures of titanates play an important role in the process of binding inorganic cations, including radionuclides, because of their good sorption properties. The advantage of some layered nanotitanates is the collapse of their structure, which occurs during the ion exchange and results in tight immobilization of targeted cations in the interlayer, thus in irreversible ion exchange [17–21].

The aim of the present work was to evaluate and compare selectivity of various titanate nanostructures for radionuclide of 137Cs from aqueous solutions.

Experimental

Materials

All chemicals were analytical pure grade and used without further purification. The solutions were prepared in deionized water with electrical conductivity lower than 10 μS cm−1 at 25 °C (Millipore, Direct-Q3). Crystalline anatase and amorphous grains of TiO2 were purchased from Sigma Aldrich. Radionuclide 137Cs in the form of 137CsCl was supplied by the Radioisotope Centre POLATOM, National Centre for Nuclear Research (Świerk, Poland). All pH measurements were made by CP-501, ELMETRON pH meter.

Synthesis of titanate nanostructures

Various titanate nanostructures were prepared via hydrothermal process according to procedures described by Kasuga et al. [22]. As precursors crystalline anatase and amorphous forms of TiO2 were used. Briefly, 1.5–1.7 g of the precursor was mixed with 70 mL of 10 M NaOH or KOH and the suspension was placed into a PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene—Teflon) lined-autoclave heated at 140 or 200 °C for 24–72 h with constant stirring. After cooling to room temperature the obtained product was filtered, rinsed with water, next with 0.1 M HCl and again several times with water until the pH of the supernatant solution reached a constant value of ca. pH 8–9. In the case of nanowires prepared with KOH, the final precipitate was first rinsed with NaOH to transform them into Na-form followed by acid–water washing as described above. Finally, the Na-titanate nanostructures were dried at 70 °C for 8 h, Table 1.

Table 1 Conditions used to prepare various titanate nanostructures
Full size table

Characterization of the nanostructures

Titanate nanostructures were characterized by X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) using the Bruker D8 ADVANCE diffractometer equipped with Cu Kα radiation source. The specific surface area was measured by the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller isotherm (BET) method and the pore size distribution by the Barrett–Joyner–Halenda (BJH) method using classical adsorption/desorption nitrogen isotherms on a Micromeritics ASAP 2405 instrument. The morphology of the titanate nanostructures was analyzed by the scanning electron microscope (SEM) Zeiss ULTRA plus and transmission electron microscope (TEM) LIBRA PLUS 120 EF.

Radioactivity measurements

Gamma-spectrometry was carried out using a calibrated intrinsic Ge detector (crystal active volume 100 cm3) and PC-based Multichannel Analyzer (MCA, Canberra). The detector had a resolution of 0.8 at 5.9 keV, 1.0 at 123 keV, and 1.9 at 1,332 keV. Samples were measured after 30 min of phase separation when the secular equilibrium of 137Cs with its decay product of 137mBa (T 1/2 = 2.55 min) was achieved. The 662 keV gamma-line was used.

Kinetics of cation exchange

The kinetics of 137Cs+ cations adsorption on nanostructures were studied by shaking 30 mg of the adequate sorbent with 20 mL of the 0.1 M NaNO3 solution containing 137Cs radiotracer. At designated time intervals from 2 min to 24 h, a 1 mL of the suspension sample was collected, centrifuged and an aliquot of 0.5 mL of the supernatant was taken for the radioactivity measurement.

Measurements of distribution coefficients

The distribution coefficients of 137Cs cations on various titanate nanostructures were determined by batch technique. The mass of titanate sample was 10 mg and total volume of solution was 4.5 mL. The K d values were calculated according to the equation:

$$ K_{\text{d}} \; = \;\frac{{ (A_{\text{i}} - A_{\text{eq}} )}}{{A_{\text{eq}} }}\frac{V}{m}, $$

where A i and A eq denote the radioactivity of the initial solution and at the equilibrium, respectively, V is the volume (mL) of the solution, and m (g) is the mass of the titanate adsorbent [24].

Determination of ion exchange capacity (IEC)

The total IECs of titanate nanoparticles for Cs+ ions were determined by batch equilibration of 0.5 g of solid material with 4.5 mL of 0.1 M CsCl solutions spiked with 137Cs. Initial activity (A i) and activity after attaining of equilibrium (A eq) were measured and IEC was calculated according to the equation:

$$ {\text{IEC}} = \frac{{ ( 1_{\text{i}} - A_{\text{eq}} )}}{{A_{\text{i}} }}\frac{CV}{m}, $$

where C is the concentration of CsCl, and V volume of the solution, and m (g) is the mass of the nanotitanate adsorbent.

Results and discussion

Identification and characterization of nanostructures

The morphology of the four synthesized nanostructures is shown in Fig. 1. The solid displays an aggregated shape with heterogeneous morphological distribution of diverse polyhedral forms and particles diameters in the range of 10–100 nm and length of the microns order.

Fig. 1
figure 1

SEM images of a nanotubes, b nanowires, c nanofibers, d nanoribbons

Full size image

Formation mechanism of titanate nanostructures is not clear and unexplained. The hydrothermal reaction of anatase with concentrated NaOH solution at the temperature of 140 °C resulted in the production of nanotubes (Fig. 1a) [21, 22]. Confirmation of the structure is also visible in the TEM image (Fig. 2). However amorphous TiO2 treated at the same temperature resulted in the production of nanofibers (Fig. 1b) [20, 23]. Amorphous TiO2 was used as a raw material to produce nanoribbons (Fig. 1c) [23] when the synthesis was performed with NaOH solution at temperature equal 200 °C. Whereas nanowires (Fig. 1d) were obtained in KOH [22, 23]. The crystalline structure of the crystalline TiO2 polymorphs such as anatase and rutile [22, 23] is described with representative TiO6 octahedra, which share vertices edges to build up the three-dimensional framework of oxides [19, 20]. It can be proposed that some of Ti–O–Ti bonds of the raw materials are broken when reacted with alkaline solution, and layered titanates composed of octahedral TiO6 units with alkali metal ions are formed in the form of thin small sheets [19–23]. Under autoclaving, the titanate sheets were exfoliated into nanosheets with one or two layers, and the nanosheets rolled into nanotubes with a slow growth rate possibly due to the high concentration of NaOH solution [18–20].

Fig. 2
figure 2

TEM image of nanotubes

Full size image

Simultaneously, nanosheets with several nanotrititanate layers were formed three-dimensionally, which may be difficult to roll up completely, so the edges of nanosheets were often bent. The Na+ ions attached in nanotubes and nanosheets could be exchanged and removed after washing with water and diluted by acid solution [19–20]. Titanium in amorphous TiO2 gel is octahedrally coordinated by both oxygen atoms, which are linked with titanium atoms of adjacent octahedra, and –O–H groups, possessing a different structure from crystalline titanium dioxide polymorphs. When reacted with NaOH, some of Ti–O–H (and Ti–O–Ti) bonds are broken by the cauterization of caustic soda solution to generate new coordinations [18–21]. Then, the octahedra interact between each other to give long-rang order, partly transform into layered structure of titanate, and self-assemble into thin titanate nanosheets. With the process of hydrothermal reaction, more and more nanosheets could be formed with anisotropic growth [17–20]. Some of individual sheets may merge to form nanofibers [20] and further interlink into a hierarchical intertextural structure [21, 23]. Most of nanofibers can interlink chemically rather than physically [20].

With the increase of the temperature (>160 °C), the nanoribbons grow accompanied with the decrease of titanate nanotubes [23]. And the crystalline structure transforms from trititanate to form more stable phase of pentatitanate H2Ti5O11·H2O [22]. Since the nanoribbons curve along the ribbon axis were observed, it is reasonable to believe that the morphology is temperature depended. The form of flat nanoribbons is stable during elevated temperature autoclaving. K2Ti8O17 nanowires were formed in the autoclaving of TiO2 powder and KOH solution [21, 23].

The specific surface area and pore size distribution of titanate nanostructures were characterized by the BET and BJH methods. The results are presented in Table 2.

Table 2 Specific surface area and pore size distribution of titanate nanostructures
Full size table

As shown in Table 2 the all synthesized nanostructures have a well-developed surfaces, especially nanotubes, where specific surface area was three times greater than for the others. This should result in better availability of surface hydroxyl groups in nanotubes samples.

Figure 3 shows XRD patterns of the obtained samples. The nanotitanate structures were identified by comparing relative intensities in their XRD with those reported in the literature [18–20, 23]. The XRD analysis confirmed the synthesis of various forms such as obtained in the work of Yuan et al. The four powder diffraction patterns were found to be in good agreement. The broadened XRD pattern peaks observed in the obtained samples are indicative of small size of the crystalline products.

Fig. 3
figure 3

XRD pattern of a nanotubes, b nanowires, c nanoribbons, d nanofibers

Full size image

Adsorption properties of synthesized nanostructures

The selectivity of the obtained nanostructures was examined by adsorption studies of 137Cs from solutions containing different concentrations of NaNO3 or KNO3 (10−3 to 0.1 M). The dependence of 137Cs distribution coefficient on Na+ and K+ concentrations are shown in Fig. 3. As expected, a linear dependence of logK d on log[Na+] and log[K+] confirms ion exchange mechanism of sorption. The K d values for 137Cs+ ions decreased with increasing the NaNO3 or KNO3 concentrations due to the competition for ion exchange sites on the nanostructures surface. Since K+ cations have larger ionic radius than Na+ their influence on Cs+ adsorption was greater. As is presented in Fig. 4 titanate nanotubes had the highest values of K d towards Cs+ ions. Probably, similarly as in the case of ferrocyanides and zeolites, Cs+ sorption can occur inside the nanotubes, where cations are dehydrated and the selectivity of adsorption depends on the energy of hydration. The inner sorption of Cs+ is relatively easy, since the energy of hydration for the Cs+ is rather small.

Fig. 4
figure 4

The dependence of 137Cs distribution coefficient on Na+ and K+

Full size image

Effect of the specific surface area was also observed when examining the (IEC) of nanostructures. As shown in Table 3 the greater amount of the available ion exchange centers on nanotube sorbents caused their higher IEC.

Table 3 Ion exchange capacity (IEC) of synthesized nanostructures
Full size table

Since the hydroxyl functional groups of titanate sorbents are weakly acidic, the effect of pH on 137Cs adsorption was studied. The results are shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5
figure 5

Effect of pH on the 137Cs adsorption on titanate nanostructures. Solution of phosphate buffer (0.1 M) was acidified by 1 M HNO3 or alkalized by 1 M NaOH

Full size image

As expected, increasing of K d with increasing of pH was observed in pH range 2–9, which is related to a slightly acidic character of the hydroxyl functional groups. The observed results K d values in pH above 9 seems rather unusual for sorption of inorganic cations on oxide sorbents, where the increase in pH is usually followed by a simultaneous increase in the K d values. In the case of nanostructures the highest sorption of 137Cs was reached at pH 7–9, and at pH higher than 9 the K d slightly decreased.

Kinetics of ion exchange is one of the most important characteristics in defining the efficiency of the sorbent. Na-titanate nanostructures revealed high and fast initial sorption of 137Cs+, followed by apparent saturation, that was especially visible in the case of nanowires and nanotubes (Fig. 6). This can be explained by the fast initial sorption on the surface of the nanostructure, and a slower ion exchange inside the nanopores.

Fig. 6
figure 6

Sorption percentages of 137Cs on a nanotubes, nanofibers; b nanoribbons, nanowires as a function of time

Full size image

Conclusions

The results presented show that nanotitanates, in particular nanotubes, have efficiently high selectivity for 137Cs. This is probably caused by a zeolitic character of Cs+ sorption where sorption of dehydrated cations occurs inside the nanotubes. Unfortunately, due to porous structure with small interlayer distance ion exchange kinetics are relatively slow, although 60 % of equilibrium was reached within 1 h. These ion exchange properties of nanotubes show that they may be useful for decontamination of non-acidic nuclear wastes and for long term disposal.