Determination and preconcentration of natural and radio-cesium from aqueous solution

Abstract

This work reports a modified atomic emission spectrometric (AES) method to determine cesium(I), based on the measurement of emission intensity at 455.5 nm with a limit of quantitation (LOQ) of 5.5 mg/l and a linear range up to 100 mg/l. In order to increase the sensitivity and lower the detection limits, potential sorbents were investigated for preconcentrating Cs from natural waters. Among the various ion-exchange materials synthesized, potassium hexanitrocobaltate (PHNCo) yielded the highest capacity for Cs-137 tagged Cs+ solutions as measured by gamma-spectrometry with a HPGe detector, showing the potential of a cesium preconcentration sorbent. As an alternative to AES determination, the PHNCo sorbent may be used for Cs+ collection from radiocesium tagged solutions and the retained activity in the dry solid exchanger be determined by gamma-spectrometry.