Concentration of ¹³⁷Cs with fly ash

The paper describes a testing of new method for concentrating cesium on fly ash. Fly ash is a waste material. It is a source of ash which is still not fully exploited; producers of thermal electricity are still looking for new ways to use fly ash. Sorption properties of caesium were tested on not modified fly ash. After testing the influence of weight of carrier it was found out, that the sorbent has low capacity for caesium adsorption. As the next step the sorbent was impregnated, and different influences were tested, like the influence of weight of carrier, concentration of acid for caesium elution, ionic force, competing cations and sorption kinetics. Fly ash seems to be a cheap way to concentrate cesium from different types of water and radioactive waste. The biggest advantage of fly ash is availability, low cost and short time to concentrate. (authors)