Removal of cesium from alkaline waste solution: Part II – Column ion exchange study

Abstract

Summary Column ion exchange tests have been used to demonstrate the ability of SuperLig® 644 resin to remove 137Cs from highly alkaline radioactive waste. The column test resulted in 137Cs removal and overall decontamination factor of 99.6% (lead column) and 517000 (lag column) respectively. The concentration of 137Cs in the lag column effluent (0.000423 μCi 137Cs/mL) was two orders of magnitude below the low-activity waste vitrification limit of 0.087 μCi 137Cs/mL. The bed volume (BV=175) at the onset of breakthrough exceeded the requirement of 100 BV at 50% breakthrough. Cesium elution with 0.5 M HNO3 was adequate with a peak BV of 3.5. C/C 0=0.01 occurred at 10 BV of eluant, which is less than the target of 15 BV. Further, 99.99% of sorbed cesium was eluted from the resin. The residual 137Cs on the regenerated resin after the column operation was 23 μCi/g dry Na+ form resin.