Ultrahigh Water Permeance of Reduced Graphene Oxide Membrane for Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment

Abstract

Membrane methods exhibit great potential for application in radioactive liquid waste treatment. In this work, we prepared a reduced graphene oxide using the amino-hydrothermal method (AH-rGO) that exhibited effective rejection rates of 99.9% for CoCl2, ZnCl2, NiCl2, and radionuclide 60Co solutions with an ultrahigh water permeance of >71.9 L m−2 h−1 bar−1. The thickness of the AH-rGO membranes affects the water permeance, as the membrane with a thickness of ≈250 nm has the highest water permeance of up to 125.1 L m−2 h−1 bar−1 with the corresponding rejection rate of 86.8%. Importantly, this is the most permeable membrane with a satisfactory level of the rejection rate for typical radioactive ions of Co2+, Zn2+, and Ni2+. Moreover, the AH-rGO membranes presented excellent stability. These findings demonstrate the potential of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) membranes for radioactive liquid waste treatment.

Keywords

• reduced graphene oxide
• membrane
• radioactive liquid waste
• nanofiltration
• permeance