Water radium

In general, radium - a decay product of uranium - is the critical contaminant which controls the suitability for release of the treated water. Radium is relatively easily removed from water. 

Other applications of NF membrane include organics removal from surface water, radium removal from ground water, sulfate removal from seawater, and food and pharmaceutical applications such as concentration of dilute solutions and desalting of cheese whey. 

These standard values are extremely low and are designed to totally preclude any risk to human beings and animals caused by radionuclides in water. If these total values are exceeded, this does not however mean that the water would be unsuitable for use by humans and for animals, but rather that it is then necessary to determine the radionuclides responsible for the radioactivity in the water. Radium 226 has become an established tracer for a -activity and strontium 90 (under certain circumstances also iodine 129) for -activity. 

Radium and its decay products, including radon, may be found in any equipment that comes into contact with the produced water. Radium is often associated with barium scales since radium and barium are in the same chemical family. Radon and its decay products may be found in any equipment that comes into contact with natural gas or natural gas liquids. 

The white solid oxides MjO and M 0 are formed by direct union of the elements. The oxides MjO and the oxides M"0 of calcium down to radium have ionic lattices and are all highly basic they react exothermically with water to give the hydroxides, with acids to give salts, and with carbon dioxide to give carbonates. For example... 

Twenty isotopes are known. Radon-22, from radium, has a half-life of 3.823 days and is an alpha emitter Radon-220, emanating naturally from thorium and called thoron, has a half-life of 55.6 s and is also an alpha emitter. Radon-219 emanates from actinium and is called actinon. It has a half-life of 3.96 s and is also an alpha emitter. It is estimated that every square mile of soil to a depth of 6 inches contains about 1 g of radium, which releases radon in tiny amounts into the atmosphere. Radon is present in some spring waters, such as those at Hot Springs, Arkansas. 

Radon-222 [14859-67-7] Rn, is a naturally occuriing, iaert, radioactive gas formed from the decay of radium-226 [13982-63-3] Ra. Because Ra is a ubiquitous, water-soluble component of the earth s cmst, its daughter product, Rn, is found everywhere. A major health concern is radon s radioactive decay products. Radon has a half-life of 4 days, decayiag to polonium-218 [15422-74-9] Po, with the emission of an a particle. It is Po, an a-emitter having a half-life of 3 min, and polonium-214 [15735-67-8] Po, an a-emitter having a half-life of 1.6 x lO " s, that are of most concern. Polonium-218 decays to lead-214 [15067-28A] a p-emitter haviag = 27 min, which decays to bismuth-214 [14733-03-0], a p-emitter haviag... 

Ra.don Sepa.ra.tion, Owing to its short half-life, radon is normally prepared close to the point of use in laboratory-scale apparatus. Radium salts are dissolved in water and the evolved gases periodically collected. The gas that contains radon, hydrogen, and oxygen is cooled to condense the radon, and the gaseous hydrogen and oxygen are pumped away. 

R. Patel and D. Clifford, Radium Removalfrom Water by Manganese Dioxide Adsorption and Diatomaceous Earth Filtration, NTIS PB92-115260/AS, Springfield, Va., 1992. 

Joly observed elevated "Ra activities in deep-sea sediments that he attributed to water column scavenging and removal processes. This hypothesis was later challenged with the hrst seawater °Th measurements (parent of "Ra), and these new results conhrmed that radium was instead actively migrating across the marine sediment-water interface. This seabed source stimulated much activity to use radium as a tracer for ocean circulation. Unfortunately, the utility of Ra as a deep ocean circulation tracer never came to full fruition as biological cycling has been repeatedly shown to have a strong and unpredictable effect on the vertical distribution of this isotope. 

Joarmon S, Pin C (2001) Ultra-trace determination of Ra in thermal waters by high sensitivity quadrapole ICP-mass spectrometry following selective extraction and concentration using radium-specific membrane disks. J Anal At Spectrom 16 32-37... 

Benes P (1990) Radium in (continental) surface water. In The environmental behavior of radium. Vol. 1. Inti Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, p373-418... 

Krishnaswami S, Graustein WC, Turekian KK, Dowd F (1982) Radium, thorium, and radioactive lead isotopes in groundwaters application to the in-situ determination of adsorption-desorption rate constants and retardation factors. Water Resour Res 6 1663-1675 Krishnaswami S, Bhushan R, Baskaran M (1991) Radium isotopes and Rn in shallow brines, Kharaghoda (India). Chem Geol (Isot Geosci) 87 125-136 Kronfeld J, Vogel JC, Talma AS (1994) A new explanation for extreme " U/ U disequilibria in a dolomitic aquifer. Earth Planet Sci Lett 123 81-93... 

Manheim FX, Pauli, CK (1981) Patterns of ground water salinity changes in a deep continental-oceanic transect off the southeastern Atlantic coast of the U.S.A. J Hydrol 54 95-105 Martin P, Akber RA (1999) Radium isotopes as indicators of adsorption-desorption interactions and barite formation in groundwater. J Environ Radioact 46 271-286 McCarthy J, Shevenell L (1998) Obtaining representative ground water samples in a fractured and karstic formation. Ground Water 36 251-260... 

Cochran JK, Krishnaswami S (1980) Radium, thorium, uranium and °Pb in deep-sea sediments and sediment pore waters from the north equatorial Pacific. Am J Sci 280 849-889 Cochran JK, Masque P (2003) Short-lived U/Th-series radionuchdes in the ocean tracers for scavenging rates, export fluxes and particle dynamics. Rev Mineral Geochem 52 461-492 Colley S, Thomson J, Newton PP (1995) Detailed °Th, Th and °Pb fluxes recorded by the 1989/90 BQFS sediment trap time-series at 48°N, 20°W. Deep-Sea Res 42(6) 833-848... 

Kraemer T, Reid D (1984) The occurrence and behavior of radium in saline formation water of the US gulf coast region. Isot Geosci 2 153-174... 

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