The efficient treatment of radioactive waste arising from nuclear accidents and overuse of radioisotopes has become an important issue, and much effort has been devoted to protecting the environment from such toxic radioactive materials. Among them, radioactive iodine in water is regarded as one of the most palpable threats to humans, as it is generated by post-use in medical and industrial applications. Although a few adsorbents and purification processes have been reported, the development of a better desalination method that is able to provide high removal efficiency, ion-selectivity, and reusability is still in demand. Herein, we report a hybrid composite membrane, composed of gold nanoparticles and cellulose acetate membranes, which has the potential to be used for efficient desalination of radioactive iodine. A single filtration process using this membrane provided high removal efficiency with more than two orders of magnitude iodide anion removal within a minute and excellent ion-selectivity. Moreover, the same operation can be applied several times without significant decrease of its performance. Therefore, it is anticipated that our work will be a new avenue for desalination of radioactive iodine in various aqueous media.

中文翻译：

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使用工程化的纳米复合膜有效而选择性地去除放射性碘阴离子

由核事故和放射性同位素的过度使用引起的放射性废物的有效处理已成为一个重要的问题，并且已经做出了很多努力来保护环境免受此类有毒放射性物质的侵害。其中，水中的放射性碘被认为是对人类最明显的威胁之一，因为它是在医疗和工业应用中使用后产生的。尽管已经报道了一些吸附剂和纯化方法，但是仍需要开发一种能够提供高去除效率，离子选择性和可重复使用性的更好的脱盐方法。本文中，我们报道了一种由金纳米颗粒和醋酸纤维素膜组成的混合复合膜，它具有用于放射性碘有效脱盐的潜力。使用该膜的单一过滤过程可提供高去除效率，在一分钟内可去除两个数量级以上的碘化物阴离子，并具有出色的离子选择性。而且，同一操作可以应用几次，而不会显着降低其性能。因此，预计我们的工作将成为在各种水性介质中使放射性碘脱盐的新途径。