Harvesting 48V at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory

Appl Radiat Isot. 2020 Mar:157:109023. doi: 10.1016/j.apradiso.2019.109023. Epub 2019 Dec 11.

Abstract

As part of an effort to develop aqueous isotope harvesting techniques at radioactive beam facilities, 48V and a cocktail of primary- and secondary-beam ions created by the fragmentation reaction of a 160 MeV/nucleon 58Ni beam were stopped in an aqueous target cell. After collection, 48V was separated from the mixture of beam ions using cation-exchange chromatography. The extraction efficiency from the aqueous solution was (47.0 ± 2.5)%, and the isolated 48V had a radiochemical purity of 95.8%. This proof-of-concept work shows that aqueous isotope harvesting could provide significant quantities of rare isotopes which are currently unavailable at conventional facilities.

Keywords: (48)V; Heavy-ion fragmentation; Isotope harvesting; National superconducting cyclotron laboratory.