Preparation of a new anion exchanger by pre-irradiation grafting technique and its adsorptive removal of rhenium (VII) as analogue to ⁹⁹Tc

new anion exchanger with pyridine groups was prepared by grafting of 2-vinyl pyridine onto polypropylene (PP) nonwoven fabrics by pre-irradiation grafting technique, followed by quaternization of pyridine rings in grafted chains in reaction with bromoethane. The results showed that the grafting yield increased with the monomer concentration and conversion ratio of quaternization increased with the time. The grafted and quaternized fabrics were characterized by FT-IR, DSC, SEM and ICP. The possibility of adsorption of perrhenate (ReO4-), a nonradioactive analogue to pertechnetate (99TcO4-), from aqueous solution by anion exchanger was investigated. The experiments performed at pH= 0.1–6 showed that pH=2.2 was the optimal acidity for ReO4- adsorption, and an adsorption equilibrium was achieved in 30 min. The reaction enthalpy was -12.55 kJ/mol, indicating that the adsorption process is exothermic. XPS tests indicated that the ReO4- uptake was a typical ion exchange between Cl- on anion exchanger and ReO4-.