The uranium recovery from aqueous solutions using amidoxime modified cellulose derivatives. I. Preparation, characterization and amidoxime conversion of radiation grafted ethyl cellulose-acrylonitrile copolymers

Abstract

Abstract Graft copolymers were prepared by 60Co-γ irradiation of binary mixture of ethyl cellulose (EC) and acrylonitrile (AN). Conversion %-dose graphs were obtained, and 95% copolymer yield has been reached at around 8 kGy dose. Conversion of nitrile groups to amidoxime (AO) were achieved by aqueous solutions of NH2OH · HCl–NaOH at 50 ºC. The amidoxime conversion was followed by using FT-IR spectrophotometer and determined as percentage. After 72 h period, nearly 100% amidoxime conversion was provided. The structures of EC-g-AN and EC-g-AO were characterized by FTIR/ATR, TGA, and SEM methods.