A novel functional porous organic polymer for the removal of uranium from wastewater

A solid porous adsorbent with amino and carboxyl is developed successfully via one-pot Friedel-Crafts alkylation reaction. The resulting materials are highly chemically stable and the surface area can be changed by different ratios of initial aromatic monomers. The critical factors effect adsorption performances such as temperature, contact time, ionic strength and pH are studied by using batch adsorption experiments. The adsorption process is fast and can be well simulated with the pseudo-second-order model, yielding a rate constant of 1.31 x 10(-3) min(-1). The sorption isotherms are correlated with the Langmuir isotherms, according to which the highest adsorption amount (46.74 mg g(-1)) is measured at pH 8 under 308 K. According to FT-IR and XPS analysis, uranium is chelated by amino and carboxyl groups, indicating that the addition of tryptophan significantly increases the adsorption capacity. These results provide a new design strategy for the development of novel adsorbents for the recovery of uranium (VI).