engleski

Isolation of iron from liquid samples and Fe-55 determination

55Fe is an activation product, low energetic beta emitter with the approximate 2.74 year half life, which belongs to the second radionuclide hazardous groups. Therefore, its presence in natural systems is limited in time and mainly dependent on nuclear reactor operation. As such, it was not as interesting as strontium, plutonium and other isotopes, but environmental concerns prompted the responsible institutions in the radiological monitoring program to include 55Fe determinations in their procedures. In the past, only few methods for its determination were developed and described in literature. Therefore, the methods of iron isolation from liquid samples with a high concentration of ions that enable simple determination of 55Fe will be shown. One consists of iron precipitation from a large volume liquid sample by sodium hydroxide and/or ammonium carbonate and separation from other elements (Ca, Sr, Cu, Mg, etc) on the TRU column with 4 M HCl or 8 M HNO3. In the other iron is separated directly from a mixture of samples and HCl on a TRU column. After the isolation, 55Fe can be determined by counting on the liquid scintillation counter. A binding of Fe (and Zn) on the three different resins, TEVA, UTEVA and TRU from the solutions of HCl and HNO3 will be also discussed. It will be shown how Fe and Zn can be easilly separated on a UTEVA column with 2 M HCl..

iron; zinc; TRU; TEVA and UTEVA resin; liquid scintillation counter

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