Adsorption studies of radioactive silver using mineral mixture

The adsorption behavior of mineral mixture for silver ions from aqueous sol utions has been carried out as a function of appropriate electrolyte, equil ibration time, amount of adsorbent, concentration of adsorbate, effect of d iverse ions and temperature in order to simulate the best conditions in whi ch this material can be used as an adsorbent. The radiotracer technique was employed to determine the distribution of silver (Ag-110m) using a batch m ethod. Maximum adsorption was observed at 0.005 mol L-1 acid solutions (HNO 3, H2SO4 and HClO4) using 0.3 g of adsorbent for 1.29 x 10(-4) mol L-1 sliv er concentration in five minutes equilibration time. Studies show that the adsorption decreases with an increase in the concentrations of all the acid s. The adsorption data follows the Freundlich isotherm over the range of 2. 0 x 10(-5) to 2.0 x 10(-3) mol L-1 silver concentration. The characteristic Freundlich constants, i.e. 1/n = 0.64 +/- 0.02 and K = 1.91 +/- 0.07 m mol g(-1), have been computed for the sorption system. The uptake of silver in creases with the rise in temperature (278-323 K).