Hydrothermal-treatment desorption of cesium from clay minerals; The Roles of organic acids and implications for soil decontamination

Yin, X.; Zhang, L.*; Harigai, Miki*; Wang, X.*; Ning, S.*; Nakase, Masahiko*; Koma, Yoshikazu  ; Inaba, Yusuke*; Takeshita, Kenji*

The adsorption and desorption of cesium (Cs) on clays of contaminated soil in a rhizosphere zone can be greatly affected by various biogeochemical processes, the timespans of which are usually months to years. Herein, we present several representative scenarios of the binding of Cs on diverse sites of vermiculitized biotite by controlled Cs adsorption to particles of different sizes. We investigated whether and how the fixed Cs in the different scenarios is desorbed by ambient and hydrothermal treatments with several low-molecular-weight organic acids (LMWOAs).