High‐efficiency recovery of rare earth ions by hydrolyzed poly(styrene‐ co ‐maleic anhydride)

Hydrolyzed poly(styrene‐ co ‐maleic anhydride) (PSMA) as a high‐efficiency adsorbent is used for recovering La 3+ , Eu 3+ , Tb 3+ , and Yb 3+ from the simulate wastewater of bastnaesite leach liquor. The pseudo‐first‐order and pseudo‐second‐order models are used to fit adsorption data in the kinetic studies and the results show good correlation with the pseudo‐second‐order model. The Langmuir model is found to fit for the isotherm data of all the rare earth ions (RE 3+ ) and the maximum adsorption capacity of hydrolyzed PSMA is 285.79, 301.92, 305.46, and 336.65 mg g −1 at 298 K for La 3+ , Eu 3+ , Tb 3+ , and Yb 3+ , respectively. The adsorption could be conducted in at pH 6.0 and the equilibrium is fast established in 30 min. Competition from coexisting ions (Ca 2+ , Mg 2+ ) was proved to be insignificant. Moreover, the spent adsorbent could be well regenerated and kept above 80% of adsorption efficiency at the end of the fifth cycle. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016 , 133 , 43676.