TITLE:
Determination of Tritium Concentration in Heavy Water
AUTHORS:
Reza Pourimani, Mehrdad Aghamohammadi
KEYWORDS:
Tritium, Liquid Scintillation Detector, Heavy Water, Correlation Coefficient, Azeotropic Distillation
JOURNAL NAME:
World Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology,
Vol.4 No.3,
July
30,
2014
ABSTRACT:
In this work, tritium
concentration was determined in different D2O enrichment in heavy
water samples. Samples were prepared from Arak Heavy Water Production Plant.
Tritium concentration was determined utilizing liquid scintillation detector
(LSC) system based on β-decay of
tritium isotope. In this work instead of simple distillation, the azeotropic
distillation method was used. Absorbed spectra and fluorescence spectra were
registered by Shimadz spectrometer UV-2100 model and fluorescence spectrometer
LS50B model respectively. Tritium concentration was obtained from 1.75 ± 0.80
up 6.16 ± 1.01 Bq/L for 0.35% to 77.50% enrichment of D2O
concentration in heavy water samples. Coefficient correlation between tritium
concentration and D2O concentration in heavy water R2 = 0.853 was derived. For
99.8% enriched D2O in heavy water, deviation was observed from
direct line that caused decreasing of R2.