Biofouling-resistant polyamidoxime-based natural hierarchical porous bamboo strips prepared by in-situ polymerization for uranium extraction from seawater

Effectively extracting uranium (VI) [U(VI)] from seawater requires efficient adsorbents. Generally, there are two major factors that affect the adsorption efficiency of adsorbents, including the biofouling around the adsorbents and the relative density of adsorption active sites. To enhance the practical application value of powdered polyamidoxime-based materials, macro-braidable and hierarchical porous bamboo strips (BS) with antibacterial properties are selected to synthetize polyamidoximized bamboo strips (PAOBS) by in-situ polymerization methods. On the one hand, natural BS have a bamboo quinone structure, and their intrinsic structure is not destroyed during the reaction process, which endows PAOBS with excellent antibacterial properties. In addition, PAOBS retains the hierarchical porous structure of BS, providing channels for the adsorption process, which is beneficial to achieve the maximum utilization of adsorption active sites. On the other hand, PAOBS increases the relative density of amidoxime functional groups, and its adsorption capacity (233 mg g-1) is approximately 2.14 times higher than that of pure PAO at pH= 6.0, including electrostatic effect and chelation mechanism. After PAOBS is floated in the Yellow Sea Basin for 30 days, its adsorption capacity for U(VI) reaches 1.03 mg g-1. Importantly, the addition of BS increases the coordination modes with the uranyl ion, and the single coordination mode of CH(NH2)=N-OH from PAO is translated to the three mixed coordination modes of CH(NH2)=N-OH, CH(NH2)=N-OH, and CH(NH2)=N-OH and adjacent CH(NH2)=N-OH from PAOBS. Construction of PAOBS plays a role in the design of novel adsorbents with high relative density of adsorption active sites and biofouling-resistant, laying the steady foundation for further realizing sustainable U(VI) extraction from seawater.