Clevasol®

Clevasol® : Presentation

Clevasol® is a new microporous cation exchange resin for isotope capture, offering extra-high chemical and radiation stability.

This inorganic polymer is insoluble in water and can be used with organic solvents ranging from 0 to 14 pH.

Clevasol® has excellent kinetics resulting in high loading capacity and minimal ion leakage.

This specialised product offers unique selectivity for a number of cations such as Cs+, Ag+, Tl+, Co2+, Mn2+ and Pb2+ in aqueous solutions at a broad range of salt and acidconcentrations.

Clevasol® changes colour for easy visual control of its ion form. FIG.1 shows the loading of Clevasol®, in its acid form (H+), in a solution containing Na+ cations.

The purplish black colour of the acid form changes to light yellow as H+(aq) cations are exchanged with metal cations, such as Na+(aq).

Clevasol® : Applications

Clevasol® has a number of applications:

• Radioactive liquid waste treatment

Its very high capacity and selectivity for cesium makes it ideal for cleaning up liquid waste even with high salt content such as seawater.

The new inorganic cation exchange resin Clevasol® is a very promising candidate for selectively extracting 137Cs from radioactive liquid wastes, which are highly diverse in composition, often very acidic or alkaline, with a high salt content. One gram of Clevasol® can remove approximately 10 Ci of 137Cs from an acid or saline solution.

Clevasol®’s selectivity for many cations, exchange kinetics, capacity, radiation hardening and chemical stability are outstanding compared to other cation exchange resins.

Clevasol® has high selectivity not only for Cs, but also removes many other radionuclides, including tetravalent cations (e.g. Th4+, Pu4+), transition metal cations (e.g. Ni2+, Co2+, Ag+ , Cu+ ) and heavy metal cations (e.g. Tl+ , Pb2+).

• Nuclear Medicine

Clevasol® is also valuable in nuclear medicine, where ion exchangers are used to isolate or purify medical radionuclides. The ion exchanger must have very high chemical and radiation stability in view of the radioactivity of the substances and the purity required for radionuclide preparations. The ion exchanger should therefore not contain any metals. Clevasol® is particularly suited for separating heavy monovalent cations (Cs+ , Tl+ , Ag+ ) and transition metal cations in various mixtures.