Green and robust adsorption and recovery of Europium(III) with a mechanism using hybrid donor conjugate materials

The hybrid donor chemical ligand of 5-tert-butyl-2-hydroxybenzaldehyde thiosemicarbazone (THTB) was prepared and then embedded onto inorganic porous silica as hybrid conjugate materials (HCM). The Europium (Eu(III)) ion was selected from the lanthanides (Ln(III)) series for green and robust adsorption and recovery based on the adsorption, complexation, and selectivity tendency from the standpoint of the pH-dependent factor. The chemical compound of THTB consisted of O-, N-, and S-donor atoms and was able to make stable complexation with Ln(III) ions in optimum conditions due to the open functionality of the HCM. A surface complexation with a good complexation fitting to the experimentally collected data was used to describe the adsorption mechanism. The Eu(III) ion adsorption performance was measured with batch equilibrium methods.…