Radio analytical technique in characterization of nuclear grade ion exchangers Duolite ARA-9366B and Purolite NRW-5010

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Ion exchange is one of the widely used techniques in nuclear industries for treatment of liquid radioactive waste. Regular efforts are being made in order to develop new ion exchange resins and their subsequent characterization so as to bring about efficient industrial performance. Among the different characterization techniques, radioactive tracer technique is one of the sensitive analytical techniques, mainly because of its non-destructive nature, high detection sensitivity, capability of in-situ detection, and physico-chemical compatibility with the material under study. The present work was therefore performed to demonstrate the application of the radioactive tracer technique in performance evaluation of two closely related nuclear grade anion exchange resins Duolite ARA-9366B and Purolite NRW-5010. The short-lived radioisotope 131I and 82Br were used in the present experimental work to trace the kinetics of iodide and bromide ion-isotopic exchange reactions. The radioactivity was measured at various time intervals using γ-ray spectrometer having well type NaI(Tl) scintillation detector of Nucleonix make. From the radioactivity measured at various time intervals, the values of specific reaction rate (min−1), amount of ion exchanged (mmol), and initial rate of ion exchange (mmol/min) were calculated. It was observed that for iodide ion-isotopic exchange reaction under identical experimental conditions of 30.0°C, 1.000 g of ion exchange resins and 0.001 mol/L labeled iodide ion solution, the above values were calculated as 0.246, 0.155, and 0.038, respectively for Purolite NRW-5010 resin, which was higher than the respective values of 0.201, 0.139, and 0.028 obtained for Duolite ARA-9366B resins. The identical trend was observed for the two resins during bromide ion-isotopic exchange reaction. The overall results indicate that under identical experimental conditions, Purolite NRW-5010 resins exhibit superior performance over Duolite ARA-9366B resins. The same technique can be extended further for performance evaluation of different nuclear as well as non-nuclear grade ion exchange resins.