Adsorption Equilibrium and Kinetics of Cesium Ion Using Natural and Synthetic Adsorbents

There is a great concern about global warming among the scientific and political communities. This inconvenient truth is the impetus driving development of alternative energies with minimal carbon dioxide emissions. For over 50 years, nuclear echnologies have been supplying a better quality in different fields of our life. However, this has resulted in accumulation of substantial amounts of radioactive waste. Americium-241, europium-152 and cesium-137, important sources of radioactivity in the waste, enter the environment mainly through fallout from nuclear weapon tests and controlled releases of industrial nuclear wastes. These radio nuclides pose serious environmental threats and challenge remediation, so they are potentially very hazardous nuclides. They are extremely long lived and do not undergo biodegradation. Their solubility in aqueous solution makes them likely to migrate through ground water to the biosphere. Furthermore, 137Cs, because of its chemical similarity to K and Na, is readily assimilated by terrestrial and aquatic organisms. However, as a cheap energy with no CO2 emissions, nuclear energy plays an important role in Korea's power supply system. The main purpose of this work is to eliminate cesium ion from its aqueous solution using chitosan bead, alginate bead and ion exchange resin and to study its adsorption characteristics experimentally as well as theoretically.