Studies on the selective Am3+ transport, irradiation stability and surface morphology of polymer inclusion membranes containing Cyanex-301 as carrier extractant

Highlights: → TBP plasticized PIMs yielded satisfactory Am transport when EDTA was used as the strippant in the receiver phase. → NPOE plasticized PIMs were effective only in the presence of an auxiliary ligand along with Cyanex-301. → The long term reusability of the membrane was not good if exposed to large amount of radioactivity. → The roughness of the membranes, analyzed by atomic force microscopy was correlated to transport efficiency. - Abstract: Transport behaviour of Am3+ across cellulose triacetate (CTA) based polymer inclusion membranes (PIM) containing Cyanex-301 (bis(2,4,4-trimethylpentyl)dithiophosphinic acid) as the carrier extractant and tri-n-butyl phosphate (TBP) or 2-nitrophenyloctylether (NPOE) as the plasticizer was investigated from different feed and strip conditions. The TBP plasticized membrane resulted back transport of Am when alpha-hydroxy iso-butyric acid was used as the complexing agent in the strip phase while no such effect was seen when ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA) was used as the complexant. Effect of varying Cyanex-301 concentration and bipyridyl (bipy) concentration on Am transport was also investigated. Long term reusability of the membrane was studied by measuring the permeability coefficient (P) after exposing the PIMs to a maximum gamma ray dose of ∼200 kGy. The surface morphology of the membranes was analyzed by atomic force microscopy and the roughness parameter was correlated to transport efficiency.