• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.186-196
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• 2020

A simple and rapid preconcentration method of actinide from seawater using Actinide resin was developed and tested with the seawater spiked with a known U and Th. The developed method of Actinide resin based on column chromatography is less time-consuming and requires less labor compared with a typical co-precipitation technique for preconcentration of actinides. U and Th, which are relatively weak-bonded with Actinide resin among actinides, were used to determine the optimum flow rate of seawater sample and evaluate the capacity of Actinide resin to concentrate actinides from seawater. A flow rate of 50 mL min^-1 was available with Actinide resin 2 mL (BV, bed volume). When 5 or 10 L of seawater containing U were loaded on Actinide resin (2 mL, BV) at 50 mL min^-1, the recovery of U was 93 % and 86 %, respectively. For extraction of actinides bound with Actinide resin, we compared three methods: solvent extraction, ashing-acid digestion, and ashing-microwave digestion. Ashing-microwave digestion method shows the best performance of which is the recovery of 100 % for U and 81 % for Th. For the preconcentration of actinides in 200 L of seawater, a typical coprecipitation method requires 2-3 days, but the developed method in this study is achieved the high recovery of actinides within 12 h.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.302-307
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• 2004

Determination of actinides in the environmental sample requires separation of each element. This procedure is tedious and time consuming. And also, the detection limits of some nuclides using alpha spectrometry are rather higher. To overcome the lower detection limit and complicated separation procedure, a simple analytical technique for the determination of actinide isotopes in the environmental samples was developed and applied to IAEA and NIST reference sediment samples. For the separation of actinides from matrix, anion exchange resin and TRU-spec extraction chromatography resin were used and chemical yields were obtained using natural uranium, thorium, $^{242}Pu$ and $^{243}Am$ tracers. For overcoming the higher detection limits of U and Th in alpha spectrometry, neutron activation analysis was applied. Using combined method, the detection limit was increased about 10 times. The activity values of each isotope were consistent with the reference values reported by IAEA and NIST.