Synthesis and characterization of ion-imprinted resin based on carboxymethyl cellulose for selective removal of UO₂²⁺.

In this work, the surface ion-imprinting technique was employed for the preparation of surface ion-imprinted chelating microspheres resin based on modified salicylaldehyde-carboxymethyl cellulose (U-CMC-SAL) in presence of uranyl ions as a template and formaldehyde as a cross-linker. Various instrumental techniques such as elemental analysis, scanning electron microscope (SEM), FTIR and X-ray diffraction spectra were utilized for full characterization of the prepared polymeric samples. The prepared resin exhibited a higher capability for selective removal of UO₂²⁺ when compared to the non-imprinted resin (N-CMC-SAL). Also, different important parameters such as pH, temperature, time and initial metal ion concentration were examined in order to evaluate the optimum condition for the adsorption process. The results indicated that pH 5 was the best for the UO₂²⁺ uptake, in addition, the adsorption was exothermic in nature, follows the second-order kinetics and the adsorption isotherm showed the best fit with Langmuir isotherm model with maximum adsorption capacity of 180 ± 1 and 97 ± 1 mg/g for both U-CMC-SAL and N-CMC-SAL respectively. Desorption and regeneration were carried out using 0.5M HNO3 solution and the results confirmed that the resin keeps about 92% of its original efficiency after five consecutive adsorption-desorption operations.