Porous -cyclodextrin polymer microspheres for iodine adsorption from aqueous solution

With the rapid development of nuclear industry, how to effectively treat radioactive wastewater is an urgent problem that needs to be solved, especially the treatment of radioactive iodine, which has high volatility and strong diffusion. Here, porous crosslinked cyclodextrin microspheres (P-CDMs) with size around 300 mu m have been developed through crosslinking and electrospraying. The P-CDMs show a high capacity to remove I2, I-, and IO3- from aqueous solution and the maximum absorption can reach 668, 205 and 131 mg g-1, respectively. Furthermore, the adsorption is stable in harsh condition (pH = 1.0, 75 degrees C), which is generally the iodine-bearing nuclear waste condition. P-CDMs also show excellent recycling performance and the adsorption performance remain over 99% after recycle 5 times. Therefore, P-CDMs can be considered as an effective adsorbent for the removal radioactive iodine from nuclear wastewater.