Recognition performance and mechanism of the activated carbon based UF resin towards traces of Fe(III) in rare earth solutions

• Published in: Journal of environmental chemical engineering 2017-04, Vol.5 (2), p.1638-1644
• Main Authors: An, Fu-Qiang, Wu, Rui-Yan, Li, Min, Yuan, Zhi-Guo, Hu, Tuo-Ping, Gao, Jian-Feng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Activated carbon; Fe(III); Rare earth; Recognition; Selectivity
• ISSN: 2213-3437; 2213-3437
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jece.2017.03.002

•A novel activated carbon (ACUF700) was successfully obtained.•The ACUF700 possesses strong adsorption affinity and excellent recognition selectivity for Fe(III).•The adsorption and recognition mechanism of ACUF700 for Fe(III) is analyzed using XPS method.•ACUF700 could be reused almost without any loss in the adsorption capacity. Some trace of non-rare earth impurities has serious damage on the performance of rare earth material. Therefore, efficient removing these impurities from rare earth is very significant. In this paper, a novel activated carbon (ACUF700) was synthesized by homemade urea formaldehyde resin carbonized at 700°C. The surface properties, chemical functional groups, element content, surface morphology, and XPS of ACUF700 were investigated. The adsorption behavior of ACUF700 towards Fe(III) were investigated by batch and column method. The BET specific surface area of ACUF700 was 712cm3g−1, and the average pore diameter was 2nm. The ACUF700 possesses strong adsorption affinity and excellent recognition selectivity for Fe(III). The adsorption capacity could reach to 13mgg−1, and relative selectivity coefficients relative to La(III) and Ce(III) was 28.0 and 25.3, respectively. Besides, ACUF700 could be regenerated easily and reused without losing significantly adsorption capacity.