Macroporous catalysts for hydrothermal oxidation of metallorganic complexes at liquid radioactive waste treatment

One of the main problems of liquid radioactive waste (LRW) management is concerned with treatment of decontamination waters containing organic ligands. The organic ligands like oxalic, citric and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acids form stable complexes with radionuclides which puts restrictions on application of many technologies of LRW management. One of the ways of destruction of metallorganic complexes consists in using the catalytic oxidation. However, the heterophase catalytic oxidation is rather problematic due to formation of metal oxides on the catalyst surface and calmatation of meso- and micropores. A possible solution of the above problem can be found in synthesis of macroporous catalysts for oxidation having a regular macroporous structure. The present paper describes the template synthesis of macroporous metalloxide catalysts performed with using siloxane-acrylate microemulsions as templates. The method for impregnation of precious metals (PM) particles into the template, which enables one to produce PM nanoparticles of a specific size and immobilize them in the porous structure of the synthesized metalloxide catalysts, is presented. A possible mechanism of the synthesis of macroporous catalysts is suggested and the comparison of the electronic and photon-correlation spectroscopy results obtained at different stages of catalysts synthesis was conducted. (author)