Novel and environmentally benign adsorbents were prepared via a simple sulfuric acid treatment process using the wastes of astringent persimmon, a type of biomass waste, along with persimmon tannin extract which is currently employed for the tanning of leather and as natural dyes and paints. The effectiveness of these new biosorbents was exemplified with regards to hydrometallurgical and environmental engineering applications for the adsorptive removal of uranium and thorium from rare earths, cesium from other alkaline metals such as sodium, hexa-valent chromium from zinc as well as adsorptive recovery of gold from chloride media. Furthermore, reductive coagulation of gold from chloride media for the direct recovery of metallic gold and adsorptive recovery of palladium and platinum using chemically modified persimmon tannin extract were studied. OPEN

Although biodiesel oil extracted from microalgae attracts much attention as one of the most promising green energies, its high production cost is a big problem, impeding its extensive use. In order to lower the production cost, the effective use of microalgal residue after extracting biofuel was investigated as a feed material of functional materials. In the present work, a new adsorbent for silver(I) was prepared by immobilizing functional groups of polyethylene-polyamine or dithiooxamide, which exhibita high affinity for soft Lewis acids such as silver(I) ions. Their adsorption behaviors for silver(I) were investigated from aqueous nitrate and acidothiourea media. The effects of the concentrations of nitrate and thiourea, as well as of sulfuric acid, were qualitatively interpreted. From the study of adsorption isotherms on these gels, they were found to exhibita higher adsorption capacity than the majority of those reported to date.