Seawater Ions Effect on the Adsorption of Cesium by Reduced Graphene Oxide Using Fractional Factorial Design

Cesium is one of the major radionuclides occur in nuclear power plants, and cause toxicity to the environment, especially the water body. In this study, reduced graphene oxide (RGO) is found to be a potential sorbent for Cs removal, as it requires simple synthesis process with no hazardous chemical addition. The highest capacity obtained from adsorption isotherm of this RGO is 111 mg Cs/g sorbent, using Langmuir model. Fractional factorial design (FFD) was employed in order to evaluate the effects of the major cations and anions in seawater on the sorption of Cs onto the as-prepared RGO. The order of inhibiting effect of these ions obtained from FFD is as follow: Na+ > Cl- > Mg2+ > Ca2+ > K+ > SO42-.