Sequestration of uranium on fabricated aluminum co-precipitated with goethite (Al-FeOOH)

Abstract

Aluminum co-precipitated with goethites (Al-FeOOHs) are ubiquitous within (sub)-surface environments, which are considered one of the most important sinks for radionuclide pollution management. Accordingly, various mole ratios Al-FeOOH were synthesized and characterized by XRD, FT-IR, TEM, specific surface area and potentiometric acid-base titration. According to XRD and TEM images, the morphology of Al-FeOOH was transformed from acicular-like goethite to cotton-like gibbsite with increasing Al content. The adsorption and sequential desorption of U(VI) on Al-FeOOHs were conducted by batch techniques under N₂ conditions. The batch adsorption results showed that the adsorption of U(VI) on Al-FeOOHs slightly increased at pH < 4.0, then the significant increase of U(VI) adsorption was observed at pH from 4.0 to 7.0, whereas the suppressed adsorption at pH > 8.0 was due to the electrostatic repulsion between negative charge surface and negative carbonato-complexes. The adsorption of U(VI) on Al-FeOOHs was independent of ionic strength at pH > 5.0, indicating that the inner-sphere surface complexation predominated their adsorption behaviors, whereas U(VI) adsorption on Al-FeOOH could be the outer-sphere surface/cation exchange reaction. The sequential extraction texts showed that the desorption of U(VI) from Al-FeOOHs decreased with increasing Al content. These findings highlighted the effect of Al content on the sequestration and immobilization of U(VI) onto Al-FeOOHs from (sub)-surface environments in pollution management.