Japan Atomic Energy Agency

Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo

Summary

A research group led by Yurina Sekine and her colleagues at Research Center for Materials Science, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Takuya Minamikawa and his colleagues at Advanced Science Research Center, Professor Teppei Yamada at Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Yoshihiro Nemoto, NIMS Engineer, National Institute for Materials Science, and Masaki Takeguchi and his colleagues at National Institute for Materials Science, National University Corporation The leader's research group has developed an inexpensive and highly efficient adsorbent made from waste pork bones by taking advantage of the characteristics of bones, which have high adsorption performance for metals such as strontium and cadmium.

Figure: Outline of this research

Various measures have long been taken to prevent environmental pollution by toxic metals around mines and industrial areas. In addition, after the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake, the importance of technologies to treat contaminated water containing radioactive materials and to prevent the outflow and wide-area diffusion of radioactive materials has been recognized anew. In particular, the prevention of the wide-area diffusion of radioactive strontium, which is easily taken up by bones and is feared to affect the human body, is particularly important, and the establishment of a high-performance, inexpensive, mass-producible adsorbent is needed.

Beef and pork bones, which are discharged in large quantities as food waste, are known to have high metal uptake performance. Therefore, in the past, there have been attempts to use them as inexpensive, mass-producible adsorbents for the removal of radioactive elements in actual nuclear facilities. However, its performance was not sufficient, and it has not yet been put to practical use. The research group has therefore clarified the mechanism by which bones have high adsorption performance for metals such as strontium and cadmium, and has developed a new adsorbent that can adsorb and remove toxic metals such as strontium and cadmium with higher efficiency than existing low-cost natural adsorbents by making good use of their properties. The new adsorbent can adsorb and remove toxic metals such as strontium and cadmium with higher efficiency than existing low-cost natural adsorbents.

This research result, which has realized an adsorbent that can be easily produced at low cost by simply soaking "pork bones" (food waste bones) in sodium bicarbonate, not only leads to effective utilization of food waste, but also to purification of contaminated water, technology to prevent contaminants from entering groundwater or seawater by burying them in soil, and recovery of useful metals. The results of this research are expected to be used not only for the effective utilization of food waste, but also for the purification of contaminated water, the prevention of contaminants from entering groundwater and seawater by burying them in soil, and the recovery of useful metals.

This research was conducted by the Research Center for Materials Science, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, in collaboration with the Advanced Science Research Center, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, and the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS).

The results were published online in the international journal " Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering " on January 21 (Japan Standard Time).

For more details, please visit the website of Japan Atomic Energy Agency.