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Porous nanofiber membrane from phase separation electronspun for selectively recovering uranium from seawater

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Abstract

Polymer fibers with amidoxime group are promising candidates to extract uranium from seawater. However, their application is limited majorly by small specific surface area. Here, we show a facial method by just using water as a second phase in electrospinning to fabricate non-woven porous polyamidoxime fibers membrane, with a high specific surface area of 31.1 m2 g−1. The membrane can deliver adsorption capacity of 243.9 mg U g−1 in aqueous solution and 6.65 mg U g−1 in spiked seawater. It also exhibits good selectivity and high stability. The results indicate that this phase separation electrospinning method has great potential on developing high performance adsorbents.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21667002, 21866001); Foundation of State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Resources and Environment, East China University of Technology (No. NRE1923); Doctoral Foundation of East China University of Technology (No. DHBK2017161) and the Opening Project of Jiangxi Province Key Laboratory of Polymer Micro/Nano Manufacturing and Devices.

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Correspondence to Jianqiang Luo or Shujuan Liu.

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Jiang, H., Luo, J., Liu, Z. et al. Porous nanofiber membrane from phase separation electronspun for selectively recovering uranium from seawater. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 331, 2523–2532 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-022-08302-4

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