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Highlights • Sodium alginate beads containing chemically bound PB beads were prepared. • The beads showed improved adsorption of Cs ions compared to conventional sodium alginate beads containing PB. • The beads showed efficient adsorption in a fixed bed column as well as in a batch with good stability. • The beads exhibited high removal efficiency toward radioactive 137Cs. Abstract A new approach for efficient removal of radioactive 137Cs was developed using a sodium alginate hydrogel beads-based adsorbent containing chemically bound Prussian blue (PB). Sodium alginate was crosslinked with Fe (III) ions to form hydrogel beads, in which Fe (III) had a dual function; it served as a crosslinking agent and also led to PB formation via reaction with hexacyanoferrate. Fe (III) ions, an unusual crosslinking agent for sodium alginate gel, led to stable, homogeneous distribution of PB inside the beads. The amount of embedded PB in the composite beads was more than two times larger than in the conventional sodium alginate-PB composite beads, resulting in an adsorption capacity for Cs ions that was two to five times higher, mainly because of a higher PB contents and because of the microporosity of the sodium alginate hydrogel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We prepared shape-controllable, sodium alginate-based hydrogels containing various particles inside the hydrogels. Centrifugal injection method was employed to obtain smaller sized gels, compared to that fabricated by conventional method. A conventionally-fabricated gel beads were spherically-shaped, in which the shape was determined by the droplets of sodium alginate solution from syringe needle. The shape of the gels was easily manipulated to obtain hollow-cylindrical gels by simple use of embedding particles and by changing the concentration of sodium alginate, calcium chloride, and the embedding components. As a result, the hollow-centered gels with the unique shape were obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]