With the help of this new method, waste water can be treated faster than before, and the environmentally positive aspect is that the process leaves less solid radio-active waste.
The properties of electrospun sodium titanate are equal to those of commercially produced ion-exchange materials.
“The advantages of electrospun materials are due to the kinetics, i.e. reaction speed, of ion exchange,” says Risto Koivula, a scientist in the research group Ion Exchange for Nuclear Waste Treatment and for Recycling at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Helsinki.
Synthetic sodium titanate is known as an effective remover of strontium, and granular sodium titanate is used in industrial quantities. The purging method based on ion exchange was originally developed by Jukka Lehto and Risto Harjula from the University of Helsinki.
Read more at University of Helsinki
Image: The jet erupting from the end of the needle elongates into a fiber, and the ethanol and acetic acid used as solvents will evaporate. The fibers are collected on the grounded grid at the end of the cylinder forming a nonwoven white sheet like a silk paper. Lastly, the fibres collected from the grid will be burned in air to remove organic polymer. CREDIT: Riitta-Leena Inki