Radioinduced grafting of acrylic acid on expanded polystyrene matrices

The unfixed surface radioactive contamination for low energy β radionuclides (3H and 14C) is determined by wiping the checked surfaces with sponge of absorbent materials. The activity built up by this sponge is measured by a liquid scintillator spectrometer. In this work, a method of obtaining sponges of expanded polystyrene with hydrophobic surface by radioinduced grafting of the acrylic acid is presented. These sponges have diameters of 28 mm, thicknesses of 1.5 - 2 mm and density of 22 mg/cm3. The samples were immersed in a grafting solution with the following composition: acrylic acid 30%, Cu SO4 1%; water 69% which were deeply impregnated in repeated operations under vacuum and pressure conditions, respectively. Finally, the samples were exposed to γ radiation emitted by a 60Co source (IETI 10 000 - IFIN-HH). The dose rates were 0.3, 0.5 and 1 Mrad/h. The range of the absorbed doses was 1 - 25 Mrad. The yields of radiochemical grafting have been determined by gravimetric, spectrophotometric and radiometric methods. The grafting agent used was 3H labelled acrylic acid. The solvation capacity and the quenching characteristics of the grafted sponges in liquid scintillators, as well as the sampling yields have been analyzed as function of irradiation procedure and the percentage of grafted acrylic fragments. The superficial grafting of the acrylic acid has been carried out by the mentioned technique, leading to the increase of the wiping efficiency of the unfixed surface contaminating activity, without changes of polymer solubility in liquid scintillators and without the perturbation of the radioactivity detection process. (authors)