Japan research team creates radioactive cesium adsorbents from pumice
There are moves to put the gathered pumice stones to use.
A research team from the Kanagawa Institute of Industrial
Science and Technology and other institutions announced that they had created
from pumice stones zeolites, minerals used as adsorbents. Zeolites are used at
the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No.1 nuclear power
plant to collect radioactive material. Zeolites have numerous holes of around
0.5 nanometers on the surface and adsorbs materials such as radioactive cesium.
The Okinawa prefectural government has been scooping up
pumice stones using heavy machinery and transporting them to a temporary
disposal site, but how to finally dispose of them is becoming an issue.
The research team focused on the fact that pumice stones
contain aluminum and other materials that are ingredients to creating zeolites.
They added pumice stones arriving on the shores of Yoron Island in Kagoshima
Prefecture to alkaline aqueous solutions and heated the solutions at around 100
C, forming zeolites on the surface of the stones
Source thejapannews
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