RESEARCH ARTICLE

Efficient uranium adsorption of low-cost and eco-friendly MQ₂-collagen fibers (M = Mo, W; Q = S, Se) composite materials prepared by co-ball milling

¹ College of Chemistry, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610064, China
² State Key Laboratory of Structural Chemistry, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou 350002, China
³ College of Intelligent Terminal Industry, Chengdu Technological University, Yibin 644002, China
⁴ Fujian Province Joint Innovation Key Laboratory of Fuel and Materials in Clean Nuclear Energy System, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy Sciences, Fuzhou 350002, China
⁵ College of Chemistry, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350116, China

^* Corresponding authors (emails: xiachqin@163.com (Chuan-Qin Xia); fml@fjirsm.ac.cn (Mei-Ling Feng))

Received: 15 June 2024
Revised: 24 July 2024
Accepted: 8 August 2024

Abstract

Due to the strong chemical toxicity and radiological hazard, uranium poses long-term threat to both environment and living organisms. However, soluble UO₂²⁺ ions with the mobility leads to difficulties in effectively capturing uranium from complex radioactive wastewater. Herein, the efficient U(VI) adsorption is achieved by MQ₂-collagen fibers (MoS₂-CF; M = Mo, W; Q = S, Se) composite prepared via co-ball milling MQ₂ and CF, which exhibit higher uranium adsorption performance with the saturated adsorption capacity (q_e) of 301 mg g⁻¹ than pristine MQ₂ due to their better hydrophilicity and the advantage of fibrous structure for better UO₂²⁺ transfer. The adsorption mechanism is revealed to be the synergistic interaction of abundant S²⁻ sites from MoS₂ and amino and carboxyl groups from CF towards UO₂²⁺. This work proposes a universal preparation method for low-cost and eco-friendly composite materials combining transition metal dichalcogenide with CF by co-ball milling for efficient uranium adsorption.