Fabrication of sponge biomass adsorbent through UV-induced surface-initiated polymerization for the adsorption of Ce(III) from wastewater

Abstract

The recovery of rare earth ions from industrial wastewater has aroused wide concern in recent years. In present work, we synthesized a novel three-dimensional adsorbent (denoted as LF-AA) by grafting loofah fiber with acrylic acid via ultraviolet radiation. The LF-AA was washed by boiling water and subjected to soxhlet extraction with acetone and then fully characterized by attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Rare earth ion (Ce(III)) was selected as a model to validate its adsorption property. The saturation adsorption capacity for Ce(III) reaches 527.5 mg/g. Not only was this material highly efficient at adsorbing Ce(III) from aqueous solutions, it also proved to have ideal performance in regeneration; the total adsorption capacity of LF-AA for Ce(III) after six successive cycles decreased only 6.40% compared with the initial capacity of LF-AA. More importantly, the LF-AA can be easily separated from aqueous solutions because of its three-dimensional sponge natural structure. This study provides a new insight into the fabrication of biomass adsorbent and demonstrated that the LF-AA can be used as excellent adsorbent for the recovery of rare earth ions from wastewater.