Adsorption of Zn(II) from aqueous solution and separation of zinc isotopes by displacement chromatography using chelating adsorbent.

The removal of zinc ions (Zn(II)) in water and the separation of zinc isotopes were fully investigated in this study. Imidodiacetic acid (IDA) type adsorbent (named PSGI) based on polystyrene spheres (PS) was synthesized by simultaneous irradiation grafting. By adsorption method, the removal of Zn(II) from water by the chelating adsorbent was studied in batch experiments. Under optimized condition, PSGI showed the removal efficiency of more than 98 % for Zn(II) and the adsorption capacity of 70.1 mg/g. Langmuir isothermal and pseudo-second-order kinetic model fitted the experimental results better, indicating that the adsorption is dominated by chemical adsorption. The spent adsorbent (PSGI-Zn) was used for further zinc isotope separation by displacement chromatography using EDTA-NH4 solution as eluent. Due to the mass effect of isotopes, 70Zn was found to preferentially fractionated into the front-end effluents with the highest front enrichment values of 70Zn/64Zn. By extending the migration distance to 20 m, we obtained the best isotope enrichment with the front maximum enrichment values as 1.0949, 1.0739 and separation coefficient values as 1.977 × 10-3, 8.33 × 10-3 corresponding to the isotope pairs 66Zn/64Zn, 68Zn/64Zn.

Effect of electron beam irradiation on the degradation of monochlorophenols in aqueous solution.

Electron beam was successfully used for the degradation of 2-chlorophenol (2-CP) and 4-chlorophenol (4-CP) in aqueous solutions in this research. The effect of radiation dose on substrate degradation and dechlorination of solutions with concentration of 50 mg/L was investigated. The effect of initial concentration, pH and presence of oxygen was also investigated. The concentration of 2-CP and 4-CP remaining in solution after irradiation were measured by HPLC. The results showed that increased radiation dose led to increased degradation of the chlorophenols and increased Cl- yield. Deaeration was also found to significantly increase the rate of degradation of chlorophenols in water while degradation and dechlorination under alkaline condition was lower than at low to neutral pH.