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Efficiency enhanced electrolysis-based tritium continuous monitor

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Abstract

Developing an online monitoring system becomes useful for continuously detection of tritium in water. A plastic scintillator chamber was used to tritium detection in hydrogen gas produced by a proton exchange membrane electrolysis cell. The fractionation factor (proton selectivity) was estimated as being of 5.41 ± 0.20, and detection efficiency of the plastic scintillator chamber was 4.25 ± 0.22%. For liquid samples, the minimum detectable activity of the developed system was estimated as 655 kBq L−1. Using this online technique for tritium monitoring based on electrolysis is expected to be useful for analysis of large tritiated water bearing samples.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Industrial Technology Innovation Program [Grant Number 2016520101340, Real-time Underwater Tritium Monitoring Technology by Electrolysis), which was funded by the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP, South Korea); and a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF, South Korea) grant funded by the South Korean government (MSIP: Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning) [Grant Numbers 2016M2B2B1945083 and NRF-22A20153413555].

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  1. Department of Nuclear Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan, Republic of Korea

    Jun Woo Bae, Ki Joon Kang & Hee Reyoung Kim

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  1. Jun Woo Bae
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  2. Ki Joon Kang
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Correspondence to Hee Reyoung Kim.

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Bae, J.W., Kang, K.J. & Kim, H.R. Efficiency enhanced electrolysis-based tritium continuous monitor. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 322, 1323–1329 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-019-06836-8

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