Extraction of Co ions from ion-exchange resin by supercritical carbon dioxide

There are a number of liquid treatment processes for eliminating radioactive ionic contaminants in nuclear facilities. One of the most common treatment methods for aqueous streams is the use of ion exchange, which is a well-developed technique that has been employed for many years in the nuclear industry. More specifically speaking, systems that ion exchange method is applied to in nuclear power plants are liquid radioactive waste treatment system, chemical and volume control system, steam generator blowdown treatment system, and service water supply system. During the operation of nuclear power plants, radioactive contaminants such as Co-60, Mn-54, Fe-59 and Cs-137 are contained in liquid radioactive wastes. And the wastes containing small amount of uranium are generated in nuclear fuel cycle facilities. To treat the liquid radioactive waste, we usually install ion exchangers rather than evaporators due to their simplicity and effectiveness, and this trend is increasing. However, the ion exchange process produces large volume of spent organic resin, and has some problems of radiation damage and thermal instability. And the reuse of the resin is limited due to the degradation of ion-exchanging ability. For this reason, were should consider a better method to expand the lifetime of the resin or to reduce the volume of radioactive resin wastes by extracting radioactive contaminants located in the resin. Supercritical fluid CO2 has many good points as a process solvent that include low viscosity, negligible surface tension, and variable selectivity. And supercritical fluids have physical properties of both liquid and gas such as good penetration with a high dissolution capability. Supercritical fluids have been widely used in extraction, purification, and recovery processes. A number of workers applied supercritical CO2 solvent for cleaning of precision devices and waste treatments. Since supercritical CO2 has its mild critical point at 31 and 73.8bar as .deg. C well as low surface tension, it is potentially suitable for cleaning substance. The operational costs of CO2 cleaning were estimated to be lower than other cleaning processes. In this paper, we considered the possible use of supercritical CO2 fluid in extracting radioactive contaminants from contaminated resin (simulated). We measured the extraction efficiency of Co-ions from the resin using supercritical carbon dioxide, and discussed the possible use in decontamination