ELIMINACIÓN DE CS- 137 DE RESIDUOS LÍQUIDOS RADIOACTIVOS MEDIANTE UN ADSORBENTE SELECTIVO

Abstract

Adsorption with composite ion exchangers is gaining attention in the treatment of radioactive liquid wastes due to higher radiation stability and higher radionuclide selectivity. The aim of this work is the synthesis of a composite sorbent material based on particulate material with magnetic properties, and a chelating agent with a high selectivity for Cs-137, a radioactive component of the cooling water at nuclear power plants. This work describes the main stages of the process of synthesis and the pilot plant used. After obtaining the synthesized adsorbent material, it has been used in some batch experiments at laboratory scale. In order to obtain the optimum conditions, the influence of some parameters such as contact time between adsorbent and radioactive solution, and adsorbent particle size have been are studied. It has been found that the adsorption of cesium on adsorbent material is not influence by contact time. With regard to particle size, it has been confirmed that adsorption can be improved by using particles of adsorbent with smaller size. Furthermore, it has been estimated that binding capacity of Cs-137 on synthesized material is a bit higher than the values found in literature with other composite adsorbent materials. Keywords: Adsorption; composite; cesium; radioactive