In an action for the convergence of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident, the completion of Step 2 was declared in last December, 2011. As for the circulating cooling system supporting the cold shutdown of nuclear reactor, the temporary treatment equipment operation maintains stability. On the other hand, the establishment of permanent equipments, safety storage, treatment and disposal for the secondary solid wastes are urgent subjects. This special issue deals with the development of highly functional composite adsorbents and the evaluation of selective adsorption properties. The technical issues for the stable treatment and disposal of solid wastes are further discussed.

View full abstract

Many kinds of water products have been offered commercially suggesting some strange efficacy beyond our scientific knowledge even now at which various advanced scientific and technological research have been highly promoted. However, it seems quite obvious that such a strange efficacy must be nonexistent. If such efficacy were really existing, it must be solved by some suitable scientific procedure. In this study, the extraction of paeoniflorin from paeoniae radix was examined by varying the kind of extracting water. Then, the result was analyzed using multivariate analysis where the effect on the extraction was assumed to be ascribed to the ionic species dissolved in each water examined. The dissolved species were analyzed by chemical and instrumental analyses. According to the multivariate analysis, the amount of extracted paeoniflorin (Y) was presented by the following regression equation. The result shows that pH, [Ca²⁺], and [HCO₃ ⁻] were significant parameters and the combination of Ca²⁺ and HCO₃ ⁻ affected negatively on the extraction of paeoniflorin.
Y=28.11−0.71 pH−0.0034[Ca²⁺]−0.93[HCO₃ ⁻]
where [Ca²⁺] is the concentration of calcium ion and [HCO₃ ⁻] is that of bicarbonate ion.

View full abstract

Fibrous adsorbent for removal and recovery of metal ions have been synthesized by graft polymerization. In the grafting, the functional groups which have high selectivity against for target metal ions such as Fe, Sc, As, and U are introduced onto nonwoven fabric. When the monomer has a chelate group which makes selective coordination bond to specific these ions, it was directly grafted on the trunk polymer. In the case of precursor monomer having functional groups such as epoxy ring, the grafted trunk fabric is chemically modified. The resultant fibrous adsorbent leads the swift adsorption of metal ions. This property by using fibrous material can reduce the column size of adsorbent in the purification of waste water. The size of purification equipment becomes quite compact and that implies total volume of equipment can reduce. Instead of organic solvent, emulsion system which disperses monomer micelles in water with assistance of surfactant was found to accelerate the graft polymerization. This means the air pollution from organic solvent can be avoided by water system grafting. Furthermore, since the emulsion grafting was highly efficient, the required irradiation dose was considerably lower compared to general organic solvent system. As a result, the emulsion grafting has enormous potential for natural polymer to use as a trunk material for grafting. If a natural polymer such as cellulose can be used, the dependence on petroleum resources, the amount of industrial waste and the generation of carbon dioxide will be reduced to some extent.

View full abstract