Keywords: Nanoparticles; adsorption uranium; co-precipitation; CoFe2O4; isotherm models

Abstract

Cobalt ferrite (CoFe2O4) nanoparticles have been prepared by the method of spraying-co-precipitation. The advantages of this approach are high productivity, excellent repeatability and high magnetic performances of the fabricated materials. The obtained materials were characterized by different techniques as X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy. It was shown that CoFe2O4 has the face-centered cubic trevorite structure and particle size of about 18 nm. The vibrating sample magnetometer measurement had shown that obtained material had saturation magnetization of about 40 emu/g, remanences was 14 emu/g, and coercive forces (Hc) was 0.9 kOe. An investigation of uranium adsorption onto CoFe2O4 magnetic nanoparticles was studied in this research. This was confirmed by our experimental results using the method of inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The pH effect, adsorption kinetics, and adsorption isotherms were examined in batch experiments. The sorption isotherm agreed well with the Langmuir model, having a maximum sorption capacity of 53.36 mg/g at pH = 6 and T = 298 K. Present research might eventually lead to a simple and low-cost method for fabricating magnetic materials and application for efficient removal of uranium from aqueous solution.