Studies on the recovery of uranium from nuclear industrial effluent using nanoporous silica adsorbent

In this paper, the sorption of uranium onto nanoporous silica adsorbent in the presence of nitrate, sulfate, chloride, fluoride and phosphate was studied. The effect of contact time between the nanoporous sorbent and aqueous solution, pH and initial concentration of uranium was also investigated. Uranium sorption onto nanoporous silica adsorbent is a very fast process as sorption rate increases with pH increment. Optimum pH for uranium sorption was 4–8. Experimental sorption isotherm is successfully described by Langmuir and Freundlich models. The results obtained by batch experiments showed that the presence of high concentration of nitrate, sulfate, chloride and phosphate anions alone had no interference with uranium recovery. However, the presence of fluoride ions (>250 mg/L) decreases uranium sorption by about 55 %. The results also showed that the presence of phosphate ions (about 300 mg/L) in solution could remove fluoride interference completely. Finally, the efficiency of the nanoporous silica adsorbent for uranium recovery from wastewater of the uranium conversion facility was investigated