Uranium(VI) adsorption on alumina hollow microspheres synthesized via a facile self-templating process

Inorganic hollow spherical materials have attracted considerable interest because of their uniform size, low density, well-defined morphology and large specific surface area. In this work, we prepared a kind of hollow alumina microsphere with a large specific surface area of 326.4 m(2) g(-1) by a simple self-templating process. The precursor and calcined hollow spheres were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and N-2 sorption isotherm to describe their structure and properties. The materials exhibit a high adsorption capacity of 34.9 mg g(-1) calculated from the Langmuir model for the removal of uranium(VI) from aqueous solution.