Lamellar structure silver sulfide nanoparticles for adsorption and selective separation of zirconium, yttrium and strontium ions

Abstract

This work is devoted to the preparation and characterization of silver sulfide (Ag₂S) nanoparticles and used as an adsorbent for the separation and purification of Zr(IV), Y(III), and Sr(II) as a simulation mode for the purification of ⁸⁹Zr from its parents (Y or Sr) and separation of ⁹⁰Y from its parent Sr using batch and dynamic conditions. N₂ adsorption-desorption isotherm for Ag₂S is of type IV with a specific surface area (222 ± 0.4 m²/g). The surface is homogeneous texture in which connected channels of diameter 8.3 µm with embedded lamellar structures and the average nanoparticle sizes of 42 ± 3 nm. Ag₂S nanoparticles sorbent material shows high selectivity for Zr(IV) from 0.01 M HCl with fast kinetics while 67.2% of Y(III) was removed at pH 4.5 and Sr(II) ions are nil. The adsorption process is exothermic and the intra-particle diffusion and film diffusion were involved in the adsorption mechanism. Also, the separation process was achieved using the column technique with a purity of 100% using different concentrations of HNO₃ as eluent. Silver sulfide as an adsorbent material shows a promising potential with high sensitivity for separation and purification trace of Zr, Y, and Sr ions.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Silver sulfide
• zirconium
• yttrium and strontium
• solid phase extraction
• thermodynamics
• batch and column adsorption