One-step irradiation assisted fabrication of RGO/PAM hydrogel for air detritiation

The nuclear power are being intensively developed all over the world, which brings lots of benefits to human while poses some threats too, especially to the staff of nuclear related industry. Unwished tritium produced during the generation of nuclear power should be carefully dealt with, and materials for individual protection that could remove tritium are urgently in demand. At present, there is still no report on the material which can remove tritium (HT) and tritiated water (HTO) simultaneously. In this work, reduced graphene oxide (RGO) embedded polyacrylamide (PAM) hybrid hydrogel, termed as RGO/PAM hydrogel, are facilely prepared via a one-step reaction under 60 Co irradiation. The prepared RGO/PAM hydrogel exhibits better detritiation performance than the corresponding pure PAM or GO/PAM hydrogels, in addition, HT and HTO can be simultaneously removed and the removal rate for RGO/PAM hydrogel at 50 and 200 min are ca. 54 and 36% respectively. • RGO/PAM hybrid hydrogel is prepared by one-step gamma radiation reaction. • RGO/PAM hydrogel displays excellent water absorption capacity. • Tritiated HT and HTO in the air can be removed simultaneously.