Gamma radiation shielding properties of recycled polyvinyl chloride composites reinforced with micro/nano-structured PbO and CuO particles

Abstract

In this work, the γ-ray shielding characteristics of fabricated recycled polyvinyl chloride (rPVC) loaded with micro and nano fillers of PbO and CuO composites were investigated. The PbO/rPVC and CuO/rPVC composites were prepared by changing the percentage of injected materials (PbO and CuO) between 10% and 40% with additions by 10%. Gamma-ray attenuation properties, such as mass attenuation coefficients, linear attenuation coefficients and half-value layer for PbO and CuO-supported polymers were obtained in the energy range between 59.5 and 1408.0 keV using narrow beam transmission geometry. These experiments were carried out by using a HPGe detector and five standard radioactive sources [241Am, 133Ba, 137Cs, 60Co and 152Eu]. Moreover, equivalent atomic numbers and the exposure buildup factor (EBF) values for incident photon energy in the range from 0.015 MeV to 15 MeV were also calculated by Geometric Progression (G-P) method. The experimental results revealed that, the measured values of the linear attenuation coefficients of the PbO/rPVC and CuO/rPVC composites showed their dependence on the type and the concentration of the filler (either PbO or CuO) and also on the incident gamma ray energy. Increasing the filler weight fractions wt.% in the rPVC matrix, increases the linear attenuation coefficients of the composite and the improvement is more significant in case of PbO compared to CuO of the same filler wt.% at the same energy. The results also demonstrated an enhancement in the radiation protection behavior of rPVC composites due to the addition of PbO and CuO fillers as nano-sized particles.

Enhancing the Gamma-Radiation-Shielding Properties of Gypsum–Lime–Waste Marble Mortars by Incorporating Micro- and Nano-PbO Particles

“…The mortars reinforced by nano-PbO showed higher LAC values than those containing micro-PbO at the same particle concentration and photon energy, indicating the particle size’s impact on enhancing the shielding capability. That is, the mortars filled with nano-PbO had better gamma-radiation-shielding efficiency than those loaded with micro-PbO, which agrees with the findings published in the literature [ 13 , 14 , 24 ]. As the size of PbO particles decreased from micro- to nanoscale, the particles became uniformly dispersed over the entire area within the mortar, which increased the interaction probability between the incident photons and the nanoparticles, thus increasing the chance of the photons undergoing more scattering and absorption processes.…”

“…N eff is the number of electrons per unit mass of the composite material measured in electrons/g. Z eff and N eff can be calculated from the following relationships [ 24 ]: where f i , A i , and Z i are the fractional abundance, the mass number, and the atomic number of the i- th constituent element in the composite material. is the average atomic mass of the composite material, and N A is Avogadro’s number.…”

A New Environmentally Friendly Mortar from Cement, Waste Marble and Nano Iron Slag as Radiation Shielding

“…This upward behavior happens because higher energy radiation can penetrate the incident material easily. Compared to the Compton interaction, the photoelectric effect becomes less dominant at higher energies [ 39 ]. A denser material will have more interactions between photons and atoms, resulting in more significant attenuation.…”

Radiation shielding performance of metal oxides/EPDM rubber composites using Geant4 simulation and computational study

“…As the incident photons interacts with the EPDM sample, the average distance a photon travels between two successive interactions is known as the mean-free path (MFP) and is defined by Eq. ( 3 ) 24 : …”