A new material system, organic amine ligands decorated polymer brushes from surfaces of glass fibers, was achieved for effective adsorption of uranium ions by integrating surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization (SI-ATRP) technique with the mussel-inspired polydopamine (PDA) chemistry. Firstly, homogenous PDA layer were firstly deposited onto glass fiber mats (GFMs), facilitating the anchoring of ATRP initiators. Then propagation of poly(glycidyl methacrylate) (PGMA) brushes from the GFMs were then initiated by using the initiators for continuous activator regeneration (ICAR) ATRP method. PGMA brushes with defined structure, grafting density (5 wt.% ~ 25 wt.%) and well preservation of chain end-functionality could be obtained by reducing radical initiator ratio and using a high dilution strategy (solvent: monomer=10:1 (V:V)). And, a narrow distribution of molecular weight (PDI≤1.2) could be attained within reduced polymerization time. The abundant reactive epoxy groups in the PGMA brushes provided an ideal platform for post functionalization of the obtained composites PCGFMs. Diethylenetriamine (DETA), triethylenetetramine (TETA), tetraethylenepentamine (TEPA) ligands, were separately introduced to PCGFMs. With the number of amino increasing, amine grafting density of the functionalized composites PCGFMs-NH2 increased. The adsorption behavior of PCGFMs-NH2 toward uranium was fully investigated. In experimental conditions, pH value of 5.0 and lower temperature were beneficial for the adsorption of uranium onto PCGFMs-NH2. Besides, PCGFMs-NH2 performed well in uranium extraction from natural seawater (pH=8.5, Conc.=2 ppb) with a removal ratio up to 75.9%. With amine grafting density increasing, a little difference in uranium adsorption capacity was observed in simulated solution but uranium removal ratio kept increasing in natural seawater. This could be explained by the protonation in weak nitric acid medium. The synthetic strategy established in this work provided an opportunity for broadening functional fibrous extraction substrates for uranium adsorption.

Controlled architecture of amine ligands decorated glass fiber/poly(glycidyl methacrylate) composites via surface-initiated ICAR ATRP mediated by mussel-inspired polydopamine chemistry for uranium extraction from seawater

256th National Meeting (2018)

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