Copolymers of vinylimidazolium-based ionic liquids and divinylbenzene for adsorption of TcO4− or ReO4−

Technetium ( 99 Tc), a radionuclide generated from uranium fission in nuclear reactors, has posed a major threat to humans due to its long half-life and radioactivity. Therefore, it is urgent to develop a strategy of selectively and efficiently capturing of 99 Tc. In this work, a series of solid copolymers (denoted as DVB-[C x ClVim][Cl]) were synthesized for efficient adsorption of perrhenate (ReO 4 − , a surrogate for TcO 4 − ) from mixed ions solution. The adsorbents with vinylimidazolium-based ionic liquid as functional group and divinylbenzene (DVB) as the basic framework exhibited stable structure and good ReO 4 − adsorption performance. The influences of the linear n-alkyl chain length on the morphology and adsorption property of the copolymers were discussed in detail. The maximum uptake of Re(VII) on DVB-[C 4 ClVim][Cl] was 517.61 mg·g −1 . Rhenium could be separated from molybdenum in the presence of co-anions and co-cations by DVB-[C 6 ClVim][Cl], which demonstrated its good adsorption selectivity . The kinetic studies showed that pseudo-second-order model was more suitable for describing the behavior of Re(VII) adsorption. The adsorption mechanism was ion-exchange between Cl − and ReO 4 − confirmed by FI-IR, IC and XPS analysis. Additionally, DVB-[C x ClVim][Cl] remained effective Re(VII) capture ability after eight adsorption/elution cycles, demonstrating their good reusability.