High Performance Task-Specific Ionic Liquid in Uranium Extraction Endowed with Negatively Charged Effect

Designing functionalized task-specific ionic liquid is a promising way to alleviate the potential second pollution caused by the usage of tributyl phosphate in PUREX process. In this work, a new anion-functionalized ionic liquid, N,N,N-trimethyltetradecan-1-aminium dibutyl phosphate ([N-14111][DBP]), was synthesized and applied in uranium extraction. Thanks to the negatively charged effect, [N-14111] [DBP] exhibits high efficiency in uranium separation, at optimized condition, the maximum of distribution ratio (concentration of ions in extractant to concentration of ions in aqueous solution) for UO22+ could reach 343.5. What's more, the selectivity of [N-14111][DBP] for UO22+ from transition metal ions was also examined in simulated nuclear industry effluent containing and UO22+ ions were separated and extracted efficiently. The advantage of extraction efficiency and selectivity of [N-14111][DBP] compared with DBP highlight the superiority of anion-functionalized extractant. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.