An anion exchange pretreatment method for the determination of low-level uranium in the environmental water samples.

Abstract Uranium in environmental water is usually at trace or ultra-trace levels with high concentrations of background ions so that the detection of uranium often couples with pretreatment processes to lower the detection limit, and improve the selectivity and accuracy of instruments. A simple, green, effective and efficient anion exchange pretreatment method was proposed to favor the determination of low-level uranium in natural environmental water samples. To determine the applicability and obtain the optimum operating parameters, the effects of coprecipitation, pH, contact time, uranium concentration, background ions, eluent and the flow speed on the uranium recovery were investigated. The experimental results showed that the proper addition of saturated Na2CO3 solution for pH adjustment did not lead to uranium loss in natural water samples, and the optimum pH value for adsorption was determined from 6 to 8. The adsorption speed was improved a lot with the employment of a novel silica-supported anion exchange resin, which also showed good linear dependence in the concentration range from