DOE OSTI2018
The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) is a new national user facility currently under construction on the campus of Michigan State University (MSU) in the United States. This facility will produce beams of radionuclides that have previously only existed in supernovae explosions and the crusts of neutron stars. As it creates and delivers beams of some of the most exotic nuclei in the universe, FRIB will simultaneously generate thousands of other radionuclides that could be synergistically harvested without impact to the primary experiment. Many of these co-produced isotopes are of significant interest for research in biomedicine, energy, environmental studies, plant sciences, and materials science. The primary beam dump, a spinning titanium container filled with cooling water, will contain the vast majority of co-produced isotopes at FRIB. There are several challenges associated with isotope harvesting from the primary beam dump loop. While a long-lived isotopes like 148Gd (70.9 y) can be harvested from the spent resin beds, methods will need to be developed to efficiently recover trace amounts of the isotope from the large volume resin. Conversely, while short-lived isotopes can be recovered in situ, the neutral pH environment, high flow rates, and large volume introduce unique challenges for efficiently harvesting ultra-trace amounts of an isotope from the circulating water loop. We have demonstrated in this work a way to harvest long-lived isotopes like 148Gd from the spent resin beds in way that minimizes the waste generated from processing nearly 200 L of the resin. We have also demonstrated that hollow fiber supported liquid membranes (HFSLM) can recover 70% of ultra-trace levels (less than 10 parts-per-trillion) of vanadium from a circulating water loop at pH 7. The work also demonstrated recovery from a solution containing the competing species at the concentrations anticipated for a one week run at FRIB with the primary ion beam 58Ni. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of HFSLM for such ultra-trace concentrations.
07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗