Performance Characteristics of Sequential Separation and Quantification of Lead‐210 and Polonium‐210 by Ion Exchange Chromatography and Nuclear Spectrometric Measurements

Abstract

A selective separation and quantitative determination procedure for 210Pb and 210Po in various environmental matrices from different sources such as IAEA-326 soil, phosphate rocks (PR), and phosphogypsum (PG) was developed. The tested samples were digested sequentially using concentrated mineral acids (HF, HNO3) by a programmable high-pressure microwave digestion system. The sample solution was loaded onto a preconditioned ion exchange column (Sr-resin) for chromatographic separation. Polonium-210 was eluted by 6 M HNO3 then spontaneously deposited onto polished silver discs to be measured using low-background alpha spectrometry. Lead-210 was sequentially eluted using 6 M HCl solution, precipitated as lead oxalate, dissolved in HNO3 solution, and mixed with scintillation cocktail to be measured by liquid scintillation counting (LSC). Performance of the developed procedure was tested using a reference soil (IAEA-326), with recommended isotope values, that was used as a quality control to assess separation and quantification efficiency (recovery %). The minimum detectable activities of 210Pb and 210Po were found to be 24 and 0.28 Bq kg(-1) for the measurements using LSC and alpha spectrometry, respectively. The recoveries (%) of 210Pb and 210Po were found to be 80 and 60%, respectively. To test the validity of the proposed LSC method, a comparative study was performed by measuring 210Pb activity concentration in test samples by nondestructive gamma-ray spectrometry.

Detection of Polonium-210 in Environmental, Biological and Food Samples: A Review

“…Other solid extractants include extractive drench resins impregnated with di(2-ethylhexyl) phosphoric acid (HDEHP), which can be used to elute 210 Po from dilute citric acid solutions [106]. Tri-n-butyl phosphate coated on a polytetrafluoroethylene support has also been found to extract Po well (100%) from a 6 mol/L hydrochloric acid solution but requires elution with a 2 mol/L HF solution [107].…”

A review of radio chemical analysis and estimation of 210Po in soil matrices

“…Polonium also separated using paper chromatographic techniques from a mixture of Bi, Po, Te and Se in a mixture of HF and methyl ethyl ketone (Crouthamel, Heinrich, & Gatrousis, 1958). Separation of polonium species in nitrate (Suganuma et al, 1981) and HCl (El Afifi & Borai, 2006;Klinken, 1961)solutions by paper chromatography techniques provides useful information about purification and quantification of polonium.…”

A fast strategy to sequentially separate and determine 90Sr, 210Pb and 210Po in water samples using Sr resin

“…In the literature, as can be seen in Table 1, there are a number of Sr resin based strategies that individually separate one of these three radionuclides [8][9][10] or even isolate two of them -e.g. 90 Sr and 210 Pb [11][12][13], 90 Sr and 210 Po [14] or 210 Pb and 210 Po [5,7,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21] -in different kinds of matrices. The table shows the load sample, resin conditioning media and radionuclide elution media used, these being the main parameters that may have an influence on recovery.…”

“…In the literature there are various approaches in which these radionuclides have been determined in environmental water samples [4][5][6]. These strategies generally include a radiochemical separation, which is mandatory as sample pretreatment to avoid measurement interferences [5,7,8]. The authors of these approaches have usually focused on determining a single radionuclide or in some cases two.…”