Speakers
Mr
Marco Ferrante
(Laboratori Nazionali Del Gran Sasso - INFN)Dr
Matthias Laubenstein
(Laboratori Nazionali Del Gran Sasso - INFN)Mr
Stefano Nisi
(Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso - INFN)
Description
An analytical method is presented to reduce the amount of 40K in sea water samples, in order to lower its interference in γ-ray analysis below 1.4 MeV due to the Compton continuum. Sodium tetraphenylborate was used to successfully precipitate 40K in the samples. A custom procedure for precipitation of potassium was developed and it was evaluated for its selectivity, repeatability and efficiency, using conventional analytical techniques such as atomic absorption spectrophotometry and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). This work has shown that the selective precipitation of potassium with sodium tetraphenylborate has led to a decrease of detection limit of radio nuclides such as 238U,226Ra, 228Ra, 137Cs, 134Cs, 133I, 134I, 60Co in γ-analysis. In particular, the detection limit for nuclides with emissions in the energy window energy below 1400 KeV is improved by almost one order of magnitude.
Keywords: Sodium tetraphenylborate, gamma spectroscopy, potassium, precipitation, seawater
Primary author
Mr
Marco Ferrante
(Laboratori Nazionali Del Gran Sasso - INFN)
Co-authors
Dr
Matthias Laubenstein
(Laboratori Nazionali Del Gran Sasso - INFN)
Mr
Stefano Nisi
(Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso - INFN)
