Optimization of Liquid Scintillation Counting for 14C Dating

The effects of different measurement conditions and sample preparation in liquid scintillation counting of benzene for 14C dating were tested. The goal of this work was to find the highest figure of merit through the variation of scintillation cocktail to benzene ratio, and measurement windows. Measurements were performed on 5ml of benzene plus increasing quantities of scintillation cocktail (7g of PPO and 0.5g of Me2POPOP in 1L of scintillation-grade toluene). Spectra of both background and standard were obtained and the counting windows selected for the highest figure of merit (Q). The best condition was 5ml of benzene plus 0.75ml of scintillation cocktail. This spectrum is compared with that of 1) pure toluene-14C plus cocktail, and 2) pure benzene-14C in which the equivalent amount of PPO and Me2POPOP present in 0.75ml of cocktail was dissolved. A correlation between the increase of the amount of cocktail and the broadening of the spectrum was observed. The effect of wrapping the upper part of the counting vial with aluminum foil to reduce background was also tested. A drastic background increment was observed in the low energy range, for unwrapped vials; the standard spectrum showed a broadening and a lower counting efficiency which reduced the figure of merit.