Uranium and vanadium are valuable trace metals in seawater. The economic viability of recovery of these
metals depends on development of efficient sorbents. The radiation induced graft polymerization technique was
adopted in this study to prepare metal chelate embedded polymers in sheet form in order to investigate the
recovery the heavy metals from seawater, using different nonwoven substrate materials. In order to obtain more
direct information on the grafting levels, the parametric studies to see the influence of cumulative dose,
retention time in air, surrounding atmosphere, and reaction temperature on grafting yields were investigated using
different electron beam energies. The grafted sorbents were verified by infrared spectroscopic measurements, and
thermal properties were analyzed by scanning calorimetric methods. Metal sorption characteristics for uranium and
vanadium were evaluated through in-field trials at seawaters of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Indian Ocean, and
Arabian Sea along Indian coastal lines. |