Treatment of zeolite adsorbed material as a potential nuclear waste glass‐ceramic matrix

Zeolite, as a common adsorption material, should be safely treated after adsorbing different nuclear wastes. In this study, different types of simulated zeolite wastes were successfully immobilized based on the exploring result of suitable experiment conditions. Firstly, sintering temperature was selected based on TG‐DSC and phase results, which represented mainly as glassy phase. Then, the holding time was chosen through density and Vickers hardness results. For the sintering of zeolite, the suitable temperature is 1500℃ and the holding time is 1 h. Through the fitting process, FT‐IR results demonstrate that the main microstructures compose of sheet silicates. Three types of simulated zeolite wastes can successfully transform into matrix and all the waste contents were uniformly immobilized. Finally, SEM‐EDS results prove that the matrix is glass‐ceramic which can well immobilize the considered nuclear wastes. This work proposes the idea of treatment of zeolite adsorbed material as a potential nuclear waste glass‐ceramic matrix and the suitable conditions were also investigated. This work investigated the suitable treatment conditions of zeolite waste by conventional sintering method. The result demonstrates that the conditions of 1500℃ sintering temperature and 1 h holding time can obtain the samples with higher density and Vickers hardness. SEM‐EDS results show that the phase of the sintered matrices is glass‐ceramic. FT‐IR results represent the changes of the micro‐structure for the samples under the effect of holding time.