Harvesting 48V at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory

As part of an effort to develop aqueous isotope harvesting techniques at radioactive beam facilities, 48V and a cocktail of primary- and secondary-beam ions created by the fragmentation reaction of a 160 MeV/nucleon 58Ni beam were stopped in an aqueous target cell. After collection, 48V was separated from the mixture of beam ions using cation-exchange chromatography. The extraction efficiency from the aqueous solution was (47.0 ± 2.5)%, and the isolated 48V had a radiochemical purity of 95.8%. This proof-of-concept work shows that aqueous isotope harvesting could provide significant quantities of rare isotopes which are currently unavailable at conventional facilities. •A selective method was developed to separate the multivalent element vanadium from a complex mixture of elements (Z ~ 1–28).•Vanadium-48 was produced via heavy-ion fragmentation of a 58Ni beam at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory.•The primary- and secondary-beam ions, including 48V, were stopped in an aqueous target cell and characterized.•By way of cation-exchange chromatography, the 48V recovery was 47.0 ± 2.5%.•The radionuclidic purity of the recovered 48V was 95.8 ± 2.5%.