Polymeric foams are of interest in radiochemical separations due to more efficient loading and elution resulting from the elimination of diffusive mass transport in and out of typical resin beads.  Our studies have focused on the development of a polymeric foam containing quaternary ammonium groups for plutonium anion exchange.  The polymeric foam is prepared via a high-internal phase emulsion (HIPE) polymerization followed by surface grafting of poly(4-vinyl pyridine).  The HIPE foams provide a macroporous open-celled rigid column material while the grafted poly(4-vinyl pyridine) provides amine groups that will become protonated in high concentration nitric acid and serve as the anion exchange sites for the plutonium(IV) hexanitrato anion.  This presentation will report findings from our recent work including properties and the performance of the polymeric materials in loading and elution of plutonium.

Polymeric foams for plutonium anion exchange

254th National Meeting (2017)

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