A portable battery-powered continuous airborne {sup 222}Rn sampler
The Polyport, designed at the Environmental Measurements Laboratory (EML) for deployment in atmospheric balloons or remote areas, was laboratory and field tested to determine its effectiveness in collecting {sup 222}Rn gas in dry and humid air. Twelve 6-cm long tubes containing 0.4 g of Carboxen{trademark}-564 a hydrophobic beaded carbon molecular sieve (BCMS) material efficiently adsorbs airborne {sup 222}Rn under dynamic sampling conditions of 1--2 hr duration. The exposed sorbent is later weighed for water uptake, transferred and counted in a low background liquid scintillation (LS) counter that can detect alpha and beta emitting {sup 222}Rn progeny with a maximum counting efficiency of 5 cpm per dpm. Each sorbent tube can be gamma counted if it contains sufficient adsorbed {sup 214}Pb and {sup 214}Bi activity. The variables tested were sampling flow rate, temperature, sampling time and relative humidity (RH).
- Research Organization:
- Dept. of Energy, Environmental Measurements Lab., New York, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Environmental Restoration and Waste Management, Washington, DC (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 656453
- Report Number(s):
- EML--593; ON: DE98007064; NC: NONE
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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