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Mining Uranium From Seawater: A Coordination Chemistry Approach, Nada Mehio

Doctoral Dissertations

Poly(acrylamidoxime) fibers are the current state-of-the-art adsorbent for mining uranium from seawater. However, the amidoxime group is not perfectly selective towards the uranyl cation, in particular, competition with transition metal cations remains a major challenge. In order for subsequent generations of chelating polymer adsorbents to be improved, the coordination chemistry of amidoxime-uranyl and -transition metal cation complexes needs to be better understood. While the coordination mode of amidoxime-uranyl complexes has been established in the literature, a number of amidoxime-transition metal cation complex binding motifs can be observed on the Cambridge Structrural Database. Likewise, the formation constants, or log K values, …