Comparative Testing of New Sorbents for LRW Purification

Sorption of radionuclides from various liquid radioactive wastes (LRW) is almost a traditional method, which is usually applied while developing technologies for LRW purification. There are a great number of sorbents of different kind and sorption properties, but research in developing new types of sorbents with high functional properties is still in actual state. Especially it is very important for LRW purifying technologies, which apply sorption-membrane scheme of purification. This paper is devoted to the comparative testing of new sorbents (biosorbent, fitosorbent, modified natural zeolite, and synthetic sorbent on the base of barium sulfate and some others). The aim of this testing is to determine the main properties of new sorbents and to compare them with some well-known and industrially applied ones, for example, ion exchange resins, natural zeolites and some others. All the experiments were conducted with applying real LRW and namely, radioactive evaporation bottoms from Physical Energy Institute of Obninsk town (Kaluga region) and radioactive aqueous solution from near-surface solid radioactive waste (SRW) repository drainage system of Zagorsk (Sergiev Posad town of Moscow region) branch of Moscow SIA “Radon”. Distribution coefficients of some α-, β-, γ- radionuclides at sorption in static and dynamic conditions were obtained for studied sorbents. Conclusions and some recommendations on applying the studied sorbents have been done.