An improvement of radioiodine separation from tellurium oxide target through the bed depth of ion-exchanger

The adsorption behaviors of no-carrier-added radioiodine and a bulk of tellurium on the anion-exchange resin in different media, namely, hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide solution were studied. The effect of shaking time on the uptake percentage of the no-carrier-added radioiodine was carried out using the batch technique in both 7 M HCl and 8 M NaOH. In column experiments for the separation of radioiodine from Te-bulk, different liquid phases such as, 2 M NaOH, 70 % methanol, a mixture of ethyl acetate to ethanol (1:1 v/v) and 5 mM tetra-butyl ammonium bromide in ethyl acetate without and with few drops of 0.01 M sodium metabisulfite were employed as eluants. Not only this, the bed depth of the resin was also taken into consideration. Different weights of Amberlyst A-27 correspond to different bed depths (3, 4, 5, 6 cm) were employed. Under the optimum conditions the overall radiochemical yield for the separated radioiodine was 90 % and recovery of Te-bulk was 98 %. (author)