Preparation of Nano-sized Iron–Titanium Mixed Oxide for the Removal of some Lanthanides.

What is it about?

Nano-structured iron(III)–titanium(IV) mixed oxide, Fe–O–Ti, was prepared by co-precipitation technique and characterized using Transmission Electron Microscopy, Fourier Transform Infra Red, Energy Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and Thermal Analysis. The particle size of the prepared material was found to be 10-15 nm. The sorptive potential of nano-composite, Fe–O–Ti, for the removal of some lanthanide elements (including, Ce, Nd and Gd) was assessed in this work. The percent uptake was found to be 95.6%, 89.5 and 81.9 for Ce3+, Nd3+ and Gd3+ ions, respectively. Three kinetic models, pseudo-first-order, pseudo-second-order and intra particle diffusion models, were tested. The results indicated that pseudo-second-order model is more applicable for sorption process. The experimental equilibrium data were tested for Langmuir, Freundlich and Dubinin-Radushkevich (D-R) isotherm models; it was well predicted by Freundlich model. The thermodynamic parameters were calculated.

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Why is it important?

The recent increasing uses of nano-sized materials for metal ions removal studies have encouraged us for synthesizing nano-structured mixed oxide materials for application in removal of some lanthanides. The prepared nano-composite iron–titanium mixed oxide exhibits intrinsic surface reactivity and high surface areas. It is characterized by comparatively high sorption capacity, effective and low cost sorbent material. A comparison of the adsorption capacity of the prepared material for Ce3+, Nd3+ and Gd3+ ions with the state of the art in the literature was mentioned in the manuscript. From this comparison, it can be indicated that the nano-sized mixed oxide has comparatively high sorption capacity. On the other hand, the lanthanide elements enter the environment through various pathways as a result of rapid increase of the utilization of lanthanides resources and their applications in many fields of modern industry and daily life. Therefore, in this manuscript, we studied the removal of some lanthanide elements from aqueous solution using a nano-sized material. The results indicated that the nano-sized iron–titanium mixed oxide can be considered as a promising material for removal of some lanthanide elements from aqueous solution.

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