Development of Density Control Technology for Improving Medical Radiation Shielding Performance of Waste Marble Powder Mixture

Abstract

The marble used at construction sites creates a large amount of sludge after processing. Because waste marble has a high calcium oxide content, it is often used as a concrete mix building material. In this study, the use of waste sludge in the fabrication of radiation shields was investigated for medical shielding applications. A shielding sheet was produced by mixing a polymer and waste marble powder. A method for improving the density of the shielding sheet was developed to improve the shielding performance. To improve the density of the shielding sheet using the WMP mixture, the gap between particles was narrowed by making the WMP particles small and by mixing in a material with a proven shielding effect, such as bismuth oxide. In addition, a stirring defoaming process was used to reduce the voids between particles, and we presented a method to control the density by processing the WMP at a high temperature of 1200 °C. The experimental results revealed that the waste marble powder exhibited the highest shielding effect when mixed with radiation shielding materials such as bismuth oxide. The reduction of voids and the size of the particles used in preparing the shielding sheet proved to be effective in reducing the gap between the particles, resulting in an improvement of shielding of approximately 15% to 20%. The investigated shielding material based on waste marble powder was shown to be effective in shielding low-dose radiation.