Preparation and performance of hexacyanoferrate impregnated cotton pads for 137Cs analysis in seawater

An anthropogenic radionuclide 137Cs always be a concern because very easy to spread in the air and dissolves in water. The small concentration of 137Cs in aquatic environments motivated us to develop methods for reducing sample volume and increasing detection levels. Impregnated hexacyanoferrate filters are very convenient to be used in various places because they do not require chemical preparation. Based on previous research, the impregnated processes were performed by circulating solution into filter water for a certain time. Since that impregnated filter was not perfectly coated on the surface filter, sampling procedure was conducted using a pair of impregnated filters to determine the collected efficiency. Furthermore, in this paper, an experiment was carried out by modifying the filter using impregnated hexacyanoferrate cotton pad. Visualization using SEM has been carried out, to ensure cotton pad completely impregnated by hexacyanoferrates. Furthermore, absorption performance was carried out using a tracer 137Cs in a low level activity concentration. The result of this experiment indicates impregnation processes on cotton pad perfectly covered surface and penetrated into inner layer although was only effective in water samples with a pH