skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Milestone Report - Complete New Adsorbent Materials for Marine Testing to Demonstrate 4.5 g-U/kg Adsorbent

Abstract

This report describes work on the successful completion of Milestone M2FT-14OR03100115 (8/20/2014) entitled, “Complete new adsorbent materials for marine testing to demonstrate 4.5 g-U/kg adsorbent”. This effort is part of the Seawater Uranium Recovery Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, and involved the development of new adsorbent materials at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and marine testing at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). ORNL has recently developed two new families of fiber adsorbents that have demonstrated uranium adsorption capacities greater than 4.5 g-U/kg adsorbent after marine testing at PNNL. One adsorbent was synthesized by radiation-induced graft polymerization of itaconic acid and acrylonitrile onto high surface area polyethylene fibers followed by amidoximation and base conditioning. This fiber showed a capacity of 4.6 g-U/kg adsorbent in marine testing at PNNL. The second adsorbent was prepared by atom-transfer radical polymerization of t-butyl acrylate and acrylonitrile onto halide-functionalized round fibers followed by amidoximation and base hydrolysis. This fiber demonstrated uranium adsorption capacity of 5.4 g-U/kg adsorbent in marine testing at PNNL.

Authors:
 [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [2];  [2];  [2]
  1. ORNL
  2. PNNL
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE), Fuel Cycle Technologies (NE-5)
Contributing Org.:
PNNL
OSTI Identifier:
1162052
Report Number(s):
ORNL/LTR-2014/318
R&D Project: AF5855000; M2FT-14OR03100115
DOE Contract Number:
DE-AC05-00OR22725
Resource Type:
Technical Report
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS; 36 MATERIALS SCIENCE; Seawater Uranium Recovery

Citation Formats

Janke, Christopher James, Das, Sadananda, Oyola, Yatsandra, Mayes, Richard T., Saito, Tomonori, Brown, Suree, Gill, Gary, Kuo, Li-Jung, and Wood, Jordana. Milestone Report - Complete New Adsorbent Materials for Marine Testing to Demonstrate 4.5 g-U/kg Adsorbent. United States: N. p., 2014. Web. doi:10.2172/1162052.
Janke, Christopher James, Das, Sadananda, Oyola, Yatsandra, Mayes, Richard T., Saito, Tomonori, Brown, Suree, Gill, Gary, Kuo, Li-Jung, & Wood, Jordana. Milestone Report - Complete New Adsorbent Materials for Marine Testing to Demonstrate 4.5 g-U/kg Adsorbent. United States. doi:10.2172/1162052.
Janke, Christopher James, Das, Sadananda, Oyola, Yatsandra, Mayes, Richard T., Saito, Tomonori, Brown, Suree, Gill, Gary, Kuo, Li-Jung, and Wood, Jordana. Fri . "Milestone Report - Complete New Adsorbent Materials for Marine Testing to Demonstrate 4.5 g-U/kg Adsorbent". United States. doi:10.2172/1162052. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1162052.
@article{osti_1162052,
title = {Milestone Report - Complete New Adsorbent Materials for Marine Testing to Demonstrate 4.5 g-U/kg Adsorbent},
author = {Janke, Christopher James and Das, Sadananda and Oyola, Yatsandra and Mayes, Richard T. and Saito, Tomonori and Brown, Suree and Gill, Gary and Kuo, Li-Jung and Wood, Jordana},
abstractNote = {This report describes work on the successful completion of Milestone M2FT-14OR03100115 (8/20/2014) entitled, “Complete new adsorbent materials for marine testing to demonstrate 4.5 g-U/kg adsorbent”. This effort is part of the Seawater Uranium Recovery Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, and involved the development of new adsorbent materials at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and marine testing at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). ORNL has recently developed two new families of fiber adsorbents that have demonstrated uranium adsorption capacities greater than 4.5 g-U/kg adsorbent after marine testing at PNNL. One adsorbent was synthesized by radiation-induced graft polymerization of itaconic acid and acrylonitrile onto high surface area polyethylene fibers followed by amidoximation and base conditioning. This fiber showed a capacity of 4.6 g-U/kg adsorbent in marine testing at PNNL. The second adsorbent was prepared by atom-transfer radical polymerization of t-butyl acrylate and acrylonitrile onto halide-functionalized round fibers followed by amidoximation and base hydrolysis. This fiber demonstrated uranium adsorption capacity of 5.4 g-U/kg adsorbent in marine testing at PNNL.},
doi = {10.2172/1162052},
journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 2014},
month = {Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 2014}
}

Technical Report:

Save / Share:
  • ORNL has manufactured four braided adsorbents that successfully demonstrated uranium adsorption capacities ranging from 3.0-3.6 g-U/kg-adsorbent in marine testing at PNNL. Four new braided and leno woven fabric adsorbents have also been prepared by ORNL and are currently undergoing marine testing at PNNL.
  • The Fuel Resources program of the Fuel Cycle Research and Development program of the Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) has focused on assuring that nuclear fuel resources are available in the United States for a long term. An immense source of uranium is seawater, which contains an estimated amount of 4.5 billion tonnes of dissolved uranium. Extraction of the uranium resource in seawater can provide a price cap and ensure centuries of uranium supply for future nuclear energy production. NE initiated a multidisciplinary program with participants from national laboratories, universities, and research institutes to enable technical breakthroughs related to uraniummore » recovery from seawater. The goal is to develop advanced adsorbents to make the seawater uranium recovery technology a cost competitive, viable technology. Under this program, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has developed several novel adsorbents, which enhanced the uranium capacity 4-5 times from the state-of-the art Japanese adsorbents. Uranium exists uniformly at a concentration of ~3.3 ppb in seawater. Because of the vast volume of the oceans, the total estimated amount of uranium in seawater is approximately 1000 times larger than its amount in terrestrial resources. However, due to the low concentration, a significant challenge remains for making the extraction of uranium from seawater a commercially viable alternative technology. The biggest challenge for this technology to overcome to efficiently reduce the extraction cost is to develop adsorbents with increased uranium adsorption capacity. Two major approaches were investigated for synthesizing novel adsorbents with enhanced uranium adsorption capacity. One method utilized conventional radiation induced graft polymerization (RIGP) to synthesize adsorbents on high-surface area trunk fibers and the other method utilized a chemical grafting technique, atom-transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). Both approaches have shown promising uranium extraction capacities: RIGP adsorbent achieved 5.00 ± 0.15 g U/kg-ads., while ATRP adsorbent achieved 6.56 ± 0.33 g U/kg-ads., after 56 days of seawater exposure. These achieved values are the highest adsorption capacities ever reported for uranium extraction from seawater. The study successfully demonstrated new fiber materials with sorption capacity at 5.0 g-U/kg adsorbent under marine testing conditions. Further optimization, investigation of other new materials as well as deepening our understanding will develop adsorbents that have even higher uranium adsorption capacity, increased selectivity, and faster kinetics.« less
  • This report describes work on the successful completion of Milestone M2FT-15OR0310041 (1/30/2015) entitled, Demonstrate braided material with 3.5 g U/kg sorption capacity under seawater testing condition . This effort is part of the Seawater Uranium Recovery Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, and involved the development of new adsorbent braided materials at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and marine testing at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). ORNL has recently developed four braided fiber adsorbents that have demonstrated uranium adsorption capacities greater than 3.5 g U/kg adsorbent after marine testing at PNNL. Themore » braided adsorbents were synthesized by braiding or leno weaving high surface area polyethylene fibers and conducting radiation-induced graft polymerization of itaconic acid and acrylonitrile monomers onto the braided materials followed by amidoximation and base conditioning. The four braided adsorbents demonstrated capacity values ranging from 3.7 to 4.2 g U/kg adsorbent after 56 days of exposure in natural coastal seawater at 20 oC. All data are normalized to a salinity of 35 psu.« less
  • For this study, we authored a new air source integrated heat pump (AS-IHP) model in EnergyPlus, and conducted building energy simulations to demonstrate greater than 50% average energy savings, in comparison to a baseline heat pump with electric water heater, over 10 US cities, based on the EnergyPlus quick-service restaurant template building. We also assessed water heating energy saving potentials using ASIHP versus gas heating, and pointed out climate zones where AS-IHPs are promising.