GEOCHEMISTRY OF LAYERED MATERIALS AS HIGH-PERFORMANCE ADSORBENTS FOR METAL RECOVERY (Invited Presentation)

Layered materials play an important role in nuclear waste management, environmental cleanup, and critical metal extraction. Better understanding of the interactions with those materials is critical for engineering high-performance adsorbent materials for various energy-related applications. This presentation will provide an overview on two general types of layered materials (cationic clays and anionic clays) and their interactions with various aqueous species, from a perspective of nanopore confinement and structure-function relationships. Nanopores are widely present in layered materials, either as the interlayers or as inter-particle space. Nanopore confinement can significantly modify chemical reactions in those materials. This effect may cause the preferential enrichment of metal cations or anions in the interlayers of the materials. The control of material structures on ion exchange, surface complexation, and diffusion in layered materials will be systematically examined, and the related modeling approaches will be discussed. Specifically, a detailed study of using layered double hydroxides as an ion trap for critical metal extractions will be presented.

Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc. For the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA000.