Recent developments in nanostructured inorganic materials for sorption of cesium and strontium: Synthesis and shaping, sorption capacity, mechanisms, and selectivity-A review.

Liquid wastes containing non-ferrous heavy metal ions and some radionuclides, 137Cs and 90Sr in particular, represent one of the most dangerous sources of environmental contamination. The remediation of wastewater containing such pollutants continue to be among the biggest challenges of Sustainable Development and Environmental Safety. Sorption-based technologies have proven their efficiency also in reducing the radionuclide content in aqueous streams to low-level residual activity, with the concomitant decrease in the amount of ultimate solid waste generated. Although sorption of cesium and strontium by resins, clays, and zeolites has been investigated intensively and even used in real applications, there is still considerable scope for improvement in terms of retention capacity and selectivity. Recent progress in design and preparation of nanostructured inorganic materials has attracted growing interest based on the potential for improving the retention performance when coupling such functionalities as ion exchange capacity, structural flexibility that may result in steric retention effects, as well as the propensity to interact specifically with the target metal cations. Titanate, vanadate, and tungsten based materials, manganese oxides, hexacyanoferrates, metal sulfides, ammonium molybdophosphates, or hydroxyapatite, characterized by various structures and morphologies, are reviewed with the emphasis being put on synthesis and shaping of such materials, their structure in relationship with the capacity and selectivity of trapping cesium and strontium from either single or multi-component aqueous solutions, as well as the possible retention mechanism. The potential candidates for remediation uses are selected with regard to their sorption capacity and distribution coefficient towards target cations, and also the pH window for an optimum cation capture.