11–16 May 2014
Casino Conference Centre
Europe/Prague timezone

Accelerator mass spectrometry of uranium: titanium dioxide matrix and homogeneous precipitation

16 May 2014, 10:45
15m
Mirror Hall (Casino Conference Centre)

Mirror Hall

Casino Conference Centre

Reitenbergerova 4/95, Mari&#225;nsk&#233; L&#225;zn&#283;, Czech Republic <font color=white>
Verbal Nuclear Analytical Methods Nuclear Analytical Methods 5

Speaker

Irena Špendlíková (Department of Nuclear Chemistry, Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering, Czech Technical University, 115 19 Prague, Czech Republic)

Description

In the environmental studies the determination of low concentrations has always been a key issue and therefore, the concentration step is usually a crucial part of the sample processing. For the extraction of uranium, sorption materials based on titanium dioxides have been proposed and studied for years with promising results. Implementing titanium dioxide materials as a sorption material and as a target matrix into classic methods of sample preparations for ? 236U/238U measurements using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) would mean a significant reduction of separation steps in procedures and big simplification of the whole method. This research focused on the uranium separation by homogenous precipitation using tetra-n-butylorthotitanate as a precursor of titanium dioxide and on the potential of titanium dioxide as the AMS target matrix. In order to optimize this method, the experiments with different uranium concentration and amount of TBOT were performed. Last experiments were dedicated for AMS measurements to observe the behaviour of TiO2 based matrix in 236U/238U measurements using in-house standard Vienna-KkU with 236U/238U isotopic ratio of (6.1±0.4)x10-11. The isotopic ratio of 236U/238U in the sample containing uranium from in-house standard and titanium dioxide was calculated as (6.16±0.04)x10-11 which is in very good agreement with the value of the standard. This means that the titanium dioxide based matrix does not influence the measurement of 236U/238U isotopic ratio and is suitable for AMS targets. In addition, it was proved that tetra-n-butylorthotitanate contains no anthropogenic 236U and therefore, can be used in the preparation methods of AMS targets from environmental samples.

Primary author

Irena Špendlíková (Department of Nuclear Chemistry, Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering, Czech Technical University, 115 19 Prague, Czech Republic)

Co-authors

Gönül Keçeli (Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Engineering, University of Istanbul, 34320 Istanbul, Turkey) Jakub Raindl (Department of Nuclear Chemistry, Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering, Czech Technical University, 115 19 Prague, Czech Republic) Mojmír Němec (Department of Nuclear Chemistry, Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering, Czech Technical University, 115 19 Prague, Czech Republic) Peter Steier (VERA Laboratory, Faculty of Physics, Universität Wien, 1090 Vienna, Austria)

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