To use resources rationally, the recovery and recycling
of rare
earth (RE) from industrial sewage have attracted a lot of attention.
Herein, a polymer adsorbent CMC/PAM/Fe3O4 (CPF)
was synthesized from renewable carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), polyacrylamide
(PAM), and Fe3O4 by the template of La3+ using ion imprinting technology. The CPF was characterized with
X-ray diffraction (XRD), IR, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS),
and scanning electron microscope (SEM), and results show that PAM
and CMC can crosslink with each other and form copolymers with Fe3O4 particles dispersing in it. The adsorption properties
for the template ions La3+ were fully studied. It is found
that CPF exhibited good adsorption performance with an adsorption
capacity of 34.6 mg·g–1. Cycling experiments
show that CPF still has high efficiency even after 5 cycles. Meanwhile,
the desorption rate can reach more than 98%. The low wastage and high
adsorption/desorption efficiency would enable CPF to be a good candidate
adsorbent for removal/recovery of La3+ from industrial
sewage.