Recovery of scandium from hot spring water with graft adsorbent containing phosphoric groups

リン酸型グラフト吸着材を用いた温泉水からのスカンジウム回収

保科 宏行; 笠井 昇; 天田 春代; 高橋 牧克*; 田中 和也*; 瀬古 典明

Hoshina, Hiroyuki; Kasai, Noboru; Amada, Haruyo; Takahashi, Makikatsu*; Tanaka, Kazuya*; Seko, Noriaki

An adsorbent for Scandium (Sc) recovery was developed with radiation-induced graft polymerization of phosphoric acids that have a high affinity for Sc onto polyethylene fabrics. The adsorption performance of Sc was evaluated with the Sc adsorption equipment, consisting of 155 mm internal diameter columns and a pump that were set up near Yukawa River in Kusatsu town. To achieve a practical use of Sc recovery, the adsorbent requires repeated use with maintaining its efficiency in terms of cost reduction. So, the reusability of the adsorbent was investigated by repeating adsorption and elution. The breakthrough curves of Sc adsorption showed similar behavior in all tests. The adsorbed Sc from the 19th adsorption test was 56 mg, which was comparable capacity to the average amount of the adsorbed Sc during the 19 tests. These results indicated that the adsorbent was used more than 19 times with maintaining high adsorption performance of Sc.