Determination of practical application potential of highly stable UiO-66-AO in Eu(III) elimination investigated by macroscopic and spectroscopic techniques

Extraction of Eu(III) from wastewater has recently received extensive attention in environmental water pollution improvement because Eu(III) is the chemical analogue of trivalent lanthanides [Ln(III)] and actinides [An(III)]. In this work, UiO-66-AO with remarkable physicochemical properties was designed through introducing amidoxime groups (C(NOH)NH2) on the surface of UiO-66-CN which was derived from UiO-66-Br through introducing cyano groups (C N). SEM, TEM, BET, FT-IR, XRD, and TGA techniques demonstrated the effective synthesis and excellent structural performances of target materials. The outstanding sorption efficiency of UiO-66-AO (similar to 253.8 mg/g within 2 h) was verified through kinetic and thermodynamic analyses, showing that the kinetics data were well fitted by pseudo-second-order kinetic model, and the sorption isotherms were effectively fitted by Langmuir model. Based on macroscopic experiments and spectroscopic analyses (FT-IR and XPS), the removal mechanisms of Eu(III) onto UiO-66-AO were electrostatic interaction and inner-sphere surface complexation. In addition, the environmental application assessment had proved that UiO-66-AO owned excellent stability, outstanding selectivity, and remarkable Eu(III) removal percentage in simulated wastewater systems, demonstrating the great potential of UiO-66-AO to remove radionuclides from the actual wastewater.