Development of Granulated Adsorbent for Clean-up of Water contaminated by Cesium

A study was conducted on sol-gel synthesis of an adsorbent (phosphotungstic acid embedded in silica gel, H-PTA/SiO­2) of radioactive cesium. A novelty of this work is covalent bonding of PTA to the surface of solid support that prevents leaching from the surface of the material. The sample was granulated with a binder, aluminium oxide (γ-Al2O3). Solid-state NMR and FT-IR spectroscopy were used to confirm the presence of Keggin units of PTA in the bound materials. Thermal analysis of H-PTA/SiO­2 - γ-Al2O3 (50 %) showed that the water content in the bound material was appreciably lower than in the pure adsorbent. Quantitative determination of surface acidity of porous materials is an important analytical problem in characterization of the adsorbents. This problem was solved by reversed titration after saturation of the materials by anhydrous solution of pyridine. Batch and column adsorption tests showed that the adsorbent demonstrated high adsorption capacities towards cesium