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Spontaneous electrochemical uranium extraction from wastewater with net electrical energy production

Nature Water volume 1, pages 887–898 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Extracting uranium from uranium mine wastewater is highly important from both the environmental protection and the resource preservation perspectives. However, conventional adsorption methods and zero valent iron-induced reductive precipitation methods have intrinsic limitations. Here we propose a spontaneous electrochemical method that spatially decouples the uranium–adsorption–reduction reactions and the iron oxidation reaction, enabling stable and efficient uranium extraction with net electrical energy output. U(VI) species are firstly adsorbed on a carbonaceous electrode, and subsequently reduced by electrons derived from iron oxidation. Using simulated wastewater, the spontaneous electrochemical method achieves 12-fold higher uranium extraction efficiency in comparison with the adsorption method. Using real wastewater, the uranium extraction efficiency reaches 303 mg g−1 upon 60 h operation with simultaneous net electrical energy production of 0.65 Wh m−2 with an operating cost of only USD 3.94–6.94 per kg of U. This work can pave a new avenue for cost-effective uranium recovery from mine wastewater.

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Fig. 1: A schematic representation of the SPEC method and the calculated potentials.
Fig. 2: Uranium extraction from water by the SPEC method with simultaneous energy recovery.
Fig. 3: Morphological characterizations of the extracted uranium.
Fig. 4: Chemical properties of the extracted uranium.
Fig. 5: Possible reactive pathways of the SPEC method.
Fig. 6: Recovery of extracted uranium.
Fig. 7: SPEC uranium extraction from real uranium mine wastewater.

Data availability

All data that support the findings of this study are presented in the article and Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper. The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in the Figshare repository with identifier https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.23993085.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 42077352 to Y.W.) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (no. 31020200QD024 to Y.Y., no. 3102019JC007 to Y.W. and no. G2021KY0601 to Y.W.).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Ecology and Environment, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, People’s Republic of China

    Yin Ye, Jian Jin, Wei Han, Zemin Qin, Xin Tang, Cui Li, Yanlong Chen, Fan Chen & Yuheng Wang

  2. College of Eco-Environmental Engineering, Qinghai University, Xining, People’s Republic of China

    Shiyu Miao

  3. Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Yanyue Feng

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Contributions

Y.Y., F.C. and J.J. designed the research; Y.Y. and J.J. conducted the formal analysis; Y.Y., F.C. and Y.W. acquired the funding for the research; J.J., W.H., X.T., Z.Q., Y.C., C.L, Y.F. and S.M. performed the investigation; Y.Y., F.C. and J.J. developed the methodology; Y.Y., F.C. and Y.W. managed the project. Y.Y., F.C., S.M. and Y.W. provided the resources; Y.Y., F.C. and Y.W. supervised the research; Y.Y., F.C. and Y.W. validated the findings; Y.Y. visualized the data; Y.Y. drafted the manuscript; and F.C., Y.W. and Y.F. wrote, reviewed and edited the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Fan Chen or Yuheng Wang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Water thanks He Tian, Beniamin Zahiri and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–13, Tables 1–3 and Note 1.

Supplementary Video 1

Morphological change of the CCF electrode surface during SPEC uranium extraction.

Supplementary Video 2

Simultaneous electricity output during SPEC uranium extraction.

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Ye, Y., Jin, J., Han, W. et al. Spontaneous electrochemical uranium extraction from wastewater with net electrical energy production. Nat Water 1, 887–898 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-023-00134-0

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