Gamma radiation shielding properties of recycled polyvinyl chloride composites reinforced with micro/nano-structured PbO and CuO particles

Abstract

Abstract In this work, the γ-ray shielding characteristics of fabricated recycled polyvinyl chloride (rPVC) loaded with micro and nano fillers of PbO and CuO composites were investigated. The PbO/rPVC and CuO/rPVC composites were prepared by changing the percentage of injected materials (PbO and CuO) between 10% and 40% with additions by 10%. Gamma-ray attenuation properties, such as mass attenuation coefficients, linear attenuation coefficients and half-value layer for PbO and CuO-supported polymers were obtained in the energy range between 59.5 and 1408.0 keV using narrow beam transmission geometry. These experiments were carried out by using a HPGe detector and five standard radioactive sources [241Am, 133Ba, 137Cs, 60Co and 152Eu]. Moreover, equivalent atomic numbers and the exposure buildup factor (EBF) values for incident photon energy in the range from 0.015 MeV to 15 MeV were also calculated by Geometric Progression (G-P) method. The experimental results revealed that, the measured values of the linear attenuation coefficients of the PbO/rPVC and CuO/rPVC composites showed their dependence on the type and the concentration of the filler (either PbO or CuO) and also on the incident gamma ray energy. Increasing the filler weight fractions wt.% in the rPVC matrix, increases the linear attenuation coefficients of the composite and the improvement is more significant in case of PbO compared to CuO of the same filler wt.% at the same energy. The results also demonstrated an enhancement in the radiation protection behavior of rPVC composites due to the addition of PbO and CuO fillers as nano-sized particles.