Self-Assembled Microscale Redox Reactor for Energy-Neutral Uranium Sequestration in Highly Acidic Wastewater

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Abstract
Highly soluble and mobile U(VI) renders rare-earth tailing uranium wastewater hard to remediate. Conventional reduction treatments demand extra energy, and show weak removal efficiency in strongly acidic conditions, restricting their practical application. Herein, we present a rationally engineered, self-assembled phytate-Fe-polyaniline (PA-Fe-PANI) composite that functions as an autonomous microscale redox reactor, enabling concurrent adsorption and catalytic reduction of UVI. The material leverages an intrinsic, self-sustaining Fe2+/Fe3+ redox cycle to drive the in situ reduction of adsorbed UVI to immobile tetravalent UIV without requiring any external energy input. PA-Fe-PANI shows outstanding uranium adsorption performance over pH 1.0–7.0, reaching a maximum capacity of 130.70 mg/g under the strongly acidic condition at pH 1.0. Tests on actual high-ionic-strength rare-earth tailings wastewater with complicated coexisting ions confirm the composite removes 96.8% uranium. This study develops an energy-neutral, scalable, and chemically stable approach to effectively immobilize uranium in strongly acidic complex industrial wastewater.
Funding Information
  • Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province (20232BAB203042)
  • Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province (20232BBE50031)
  • Project Program of National Key Laboratory of Uranium Resources Exploration-Mining and Nuclear Remote Sensing (2025QZ-YZZ-02)
  • National Natural Science Foundation of China (22376023)
  • National Natural Science Foundation of China (U25A20591)
  • Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program by JXAST (2024QT11)

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