Evaluation of Ion-Exchange Resins and Electrospun Membranes for Ac-225 Purification
AIChE Annual Meeting
2023
2023 AIChE Annual Meeting
Annual Student Conference: Competitions & Events
Undergraduate Student Poster Session: Separations
Monday, November 6, 2023 - 10:00am to 12:30pm
In this work, blends of poly(vinylbenzyl chloride) and polystyrene in electrospun membranes are evaluated for stability in chemically relevant solvents, porosity, and pure-water flux. With these initial characterizations, commercial resins are evaluated for their adsorption performance to benchmark sorption in novel DGA membrane adsorbers. Performance at 4M and 6M nitric acid acid solutions provide valuable insight to design conditions for future process elution and retention steps. Equilibrium of adsorbed- and solution-phase metals is analyzed by ICP-OES and fit to a Langmuir isotherm model to determine maximum surface adsorption and association constant parameters. Novel membrane adsorbers show lower lanthanum capacity than standard resins, but slightly higher association. Work remains to explore ligand functionalization chemistry of membranes and to evaluate their performance regarding multi-metal and dynamic adsorption, post-functionalization permeability. With all the relevant chemistries characterized, a foundation may be laid to develop further materials and processes to bring Ac-225 to clinically practical scales.