Characterization Of Cycled Spherical Resorcinol-Formaldehyde Ion Exchange Resin

This report presents characterization data for two spherical resorcinol-formaldehyde (sRF) resin beds that had processed cesium in non-radioactive and radioactive cycles. All column cycle operations for the resin beds including loading, displacements, elution, regeneration, breakthroughs, and solution analyses are reported in Nash and Duignan, 2009a. That report covered four ion exchange (IX) campaigns using the two ∼11 mL beds in columns in a lead-lag arrangement. The first two campaigns used Savannah River Site (SRS) Tank 2F nonradioactive simulant while the latter two were fed with actual dissolved salt in the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) Shielded Cells. Both radioactive cycles ran to cesium breakthrough of the lead column. The resin beds saw in excess of 400 bed volumes of feed in each cycle. Resin disposal plans in tank farm processing depend on characterizations of resin used with actual tank feed. Following a final 30 bed volume (BV) elution with nitric acid, the resin beds were found to contain detectable chromium, barium, boron, aluminum, iron, sodium, sulfur, plutonium, cesium, and mercury. Resin affinity for plutonium is important in criticality safety considerations. Cesium-137 was found to be less than 10E+7 dpm/g of resin, similar to past work with sRF resin. Sulfur levels are reasonably consistent with other work and are expected to represent sulfur chemistry used in the resin manufacture. There were low but detectable levels of technetium, americium, and curium. Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP) work on the used (eluted) resin samples showed significant contents of mercury, barium, and chromium. One resin sample exceeded the TCLP level for mercury while the other metals were below TCLP levels. TCLP organics measurements indicated measurable benzene in one case, though the source was unknown. Results of this work were compared with other work on similar sRF resin characterizations in this report. This is the first work to quantify mercury on sRF resin. Resin mercury content is important in plans for the disposition of used sRF resin. Mercury speciation in high level waste (HLW) is unknown. It may be partly organic, one example being methyl mercury cation. Further study of the resin's affinity for mercury is recommended.