Long-lived radionuclides such as 60Co and 54Mn in radioactive waste water must be properly treated to
protect
the environment from long-term radioactive hazard. In this study,
nine zeolite imidazole frameworks (ZIFs) were initially synthesized
to investigate an effective adsorbent for Co(II) and Mn(II) in solution.
Zeolite imidazole framework-14 (ZIF-14) with good performance was
selected, and subsequent characterization and adsorption performance
tests were conducted. The results show that ZIF-14 has good hydrothermal
stability within 520 °C. Under the conditions of pH = 6.72, T = 303 K and the initial concentration of 500 mg·L–1, the saturated adsorption capacity for Co(II) and
Mn(II) reached 148.55 mg·g–1 and 252.85 mg·g–1, respectively. The analysis of thermodynamic parameters
shows that the adsorption process of ZIF-14 to Co(II) and Mn(II) is
spontaneous and endothermic. The pseudo-second-order kinetic model,
Langmuir isotherm model, and Boyd model are more in line with the
adsorption process of Co(II) and Mn(II) by ZIF-14, which proves that
the active sites on the surface of ZIF-14 are evenly distributed,
and the adsorption process is single-molecule chemical layer adsorption.
In addition, the liquid film diffusion dominates the adsorption rate
during the adsorption process of Co(II) and Mn(II) by ZIF-14. ZIF-14
has good selectivity for cobalt and manganese in both high-concentration
interference ion solution and multimetal ion solution with the same
concentration. Moreover, ZIF-14 still has good adsorption performance
after five times of elution.