Issue 11, 2023

Adsorption-based capture of iodine and organic iodides: status and challenges

Abstract

Nuclear energy is a sustainable low-carbon energy source that plays an increasingly important role in supporting the progress of human society. However, there are safety issues associated with the operation of nuclear reactors. In particular, volatile radioactive elements, primarily 129I and 131I, in the form of molecular iodine (I2) or organic iodides (e.g., CH3I and CH3CH2I), are harmful for the environment and human health and must be removed before discharging the off-gas. Adsorption processes employing porous solid adsorbents to capture radioactive iodine compounds have attracted considerable attention owing to their simple operation and low maintenance cost and because they avoid the use of highly corrosive solutions. Despite the efforts devoted to developing novel adsorbents for iodine capture, certain critical issues related to practical applications have been overlooked. This review summarizes the adsorption mechanisms employed to capture I2 and CH3I, focusing on the different adsorbent requirements. This review also compares the static and dynamic evaluation systems, analyzes the structure–function relationship under different testing conditions, and highlights the importance of using appropriate conditions to evaluate adsorbents. Moreover, the simultaneous capture of I2 and CH3I is discussed, which is quite challenging but has been largely ignored in previous studies. Finally, this review outlines the challenges and opportunities in this field from the perspective of materials design and system evaluation, indicating that properly designing adsorbents to provide sufficient chemisorption sites may be the only way to meet the practical application requirements.

Graphical abstract: Adsorption-based capture of iodine and organic iodides: status and challenges

Article information

Article type
Review Article
Submitted
05 Dec 2022
Accepted
23 Feb 2023
First published
24 Feb 2023
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2023,11, 5460-5475

Adsorption-based capture of iodine and organic iodides: status and challenges

T. Pan, K. Yang, X. Dong and Y. Han, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2023, 11, 5460 DOI: 10.1039/D2TA09448G

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements