A study of the Arrhenius behavior of the co-precipitation of radium, barium and strontium sulfate
Journal article, 2013

Co-precipitation of radium, barium and strontium is an important process in many contexts, such as uranium mining, oil extraction and in the safety assessment of a final repository for used nuclear fuel. Co-precipitation to a solid solution is possible since radium, barium and strontium act as chemical analogues. In this work the co-precipitation of radium, barium and strontium was studied and the kinetic behavior of the co-precipitation process was investigated. It was shown that radium, barium and strontium co-precipitate congruently and that the precipitation followed an Arrhenius behavior and the Arrhenius parameters for the systems was determined. When studying the differences of the Arrhenius constants by using a student t test (95 % confidence interval) it was observed that the only significant difference in the activation energy, E (a), is between radium and barium and between radium and strontium respectively, the pure strontium having the larger activation energy in comparison. This is most likely coupled to the metal ion size; since the hydration waters are more strongly bound, which leads to them having a slower exchange rate, which in turn effects the rate of co-precipitation to the metal these reactions will be slower.

Radium

Co-precipitation

Strontium

water

Barium

Kinetics

solubility

Arrhenius

transport

Author

Hanna Hedström

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Industrial Materials Recycling

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Nuclear Chemistry

Henrik Ramebäck

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Nuclear Chemistry

Christian Ekberg

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Nuclear Chemistry

Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry

0236-5731 (ISSN) 1588-2780 (eISSN)

Vol. 298 2 847-852

Subject Categories

Chemical Sciences

DOI

10.1007/s10967-013-2431-0

More information

Created

10/8/2017