The rapid development of nuclear energy inevitably produces radioactive wastes either released from nuclear accidents (e.g. Fukushima Daiichi), or from routine operation of nuclear power plants, and thereby brings radioactive threats to environment and human being. In the aqueous liquid nuclear wastes, long half-life radioactive isotopes, 137Cs+ (half-life ~ 30 years) and 90Sr2+ (half-life ~ 28.79 years) represent the most abundant species, while the remediation remains a challenging task. In the past decades, various separation technologies including adsorption, precipitation, flotation, and membrane filtration have been developed, among which the membrane purification still remains one of the most useful water treatment technologies thanks to its high flexibility, easy up-scalability and low energy consumption, etc. However, the conventional filtration membranes have some limitations for nuclide contaminated water including low sorption capacity and selectivity to nuclide ions (e.g. Cs+ and Sr2+), and large and fixed pore size that are unable to retain the ions.
The overall goal of this MSCA-IF project is to develop a new generation of membrane technology that owns a superior adsorption capacity and selectivity for nuclide ions (e.g. Cs+), and a smart water gating function with permeability modulated by Cs+ adsorption process using stimuli-responsive microgels assembled as gates in membraned pores, to efficiently remedy liquid nuclear wastes. So far, the project has achieved most of the deliverables, milestones and exploitable results, though tasks have slightly shifted mainly according to new research findings and/or new research obstacles being developed during the action, and also largely due to the restrictions and measures adopted in the COVID19 pandemic. In particular, the synthesis of functional composite microgels, the membrane filtration for efficient water treatment and the good understandings of the microgel deformation, etc. have been achieved. Good trainings on the researcher and effective knowledge transfer between researcher and the host institution have been obtained throughout the action of the project.
