Rapid and simple concentration method for radionuclide analysis of environmental samples

Matsueda, Makoto   ; Koarai, Kazuma   ; Fujiwara, Kenso ; Kitamura, Akihiro   

Radionuclide analysis of environmental water requires large amount of samples to be concentrated, because generally the radionuclide level is very low. In order to achieve rapid and simple concentration method, we applied homogeneous liquid-liquid extraction for sample enrichment. This method extracts the desired solute existing in the homogeneous solution into the water-immiscible phase by time and pH dependent phase separations. Since the method forms large surface area of the interface between the solvent and the desired solute, we only need small amount of extraction solvents to migrate desired solute into the formed phase. In this study, we tried two kind of phase separation phenomenon. (1) pH dependent extraction. (2) Ionic liquid extraction.