“New breakthrough: ‘The highest adsorption capacity reaches 8 times the US standard.’”
# New breakthrough: “The highest adsorption capacity reaches 8 times the US standard” The Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Process Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has made recent progress in the field of seawater uranium extraction materials. Related findings were published in international academic journals “Journal of Hazardous Materials” and “Separation and Purification Techniques”. The research team introduced discrete molecular topology design into porous organic cage systems for the first time, resulting in the synthesis of phosphate-functionalized material PhosCage. Under laboratory conditions, PhosCage can reach adsorption equilibrium in just 5 minutes; in real seawater samples from various marine areas, its highest uranium extraction capacity reached 50.4 mg/g, which is 8.4 times the relevant US Department of Energy standard. To improve the applicability of the material in real marine environments, the team combined PhosCage with aramid nanofibers. Through physical entanglement and chemical cross-linking, they successfully prepared double-network composite aerogel microspheres AC-POC. The interwoven phosphate and carboxyl groups within these microspheres create a strong synergistic electron-donating coordination environment, significantly reducing the coordination energy barrier of uranium ions and enhancing the capture efficiency. According to the South China Morning Post,...