Abstract
Environmental samples often contain innocuous components that make trace actinide analysis difficult and expensive. Therefore, it is expedient to separate these materials from actinide particles. One characteristic of many actinides is that they are paramagnetic. High-gradient magnetic filtration (HGMF) is a non-destructive technique that selectively captures magnetic constituents from a matrix containing non-magnetic species. In this work, a novel HGMF device made of a permanent magnet array was used to effectively separate UO2 particles from undesirable soil species. Up to 88% of the UO2 particles present in suspensions were effectively captured by HGMF, resulting in their enrichment and a substantial reduction in the concentrations of other constituents.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry |
| DOIs | |
| State | Accepted/In press - 2026 |
Funding
This work was funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research & Development. Analytical support for this work was performed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Ultra-Trace Forensic Science Center. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (https://www.energy.gov/doe-public-access-plan).
Keywords
- Actinide separations
- HGMF
- HGMS
- High-gradient magnetic filtration
- Paramagnetic particles