Tungsten Alloy Radiation Shielding Materials Application in γ-raysⅠ

γ-rays is released from atomic decay cleavage. While it can be used to kill cancer cells and achieve the effect of cancer treatment in the medical, but it’s also likely to cause DNA breakage of intracellular organism and thus cause cell mutation, lacking of hematopoietic function, and cause cancer or other diseases, like a double-edged sword. γ-ray wave length is very short, but its penetrating force is extremely strong, carrying with high-energy.
 
Although γ-ray has a wide range of uses, but human beings will induce such as leukemia, thyroid disease, bone tumors and other malignant diseases if irradiating with a large dose of γ-rays for a long time. For pregnant women, it may cause gene mutation and chromosomal aberration, result congenital malformations, miscarriage, stillbirth, infertility and other diseases. If γ-rays exposure to the substances like metal utensils, soil or food for a long-term, it will make these non-radioactive substances induced radioactivity, and cause harm to humans. Therefore, it is inevitable to shield γ-ray.
 
The power of γ-ray mainly shows in the following two aspects: 1, The large energy of γ-ray. Because of its very short wavelength and high frequency, therefore γ-ray has a very large energy. High-energy γ ray does great damaging effects on the human bodies, and increased with the irradiating dose of γ-ray. 2, Strong penetrating force of γ-ray. When the human body is irradiating by γ-ray, γ-ray can enter the body's interior, and have an ionization effect with the cells, and erode the organic molecules in vivo. Therefore, we must find a safe and reliable protection material for shielding γ rays. However, tungsten alloy shielding material can satisfy the requirements with safety and reliance, and its high-density, high radiation absorption capacity has been widespread concerned.

Blue Tungsten Oxide Preparation out of Ammonium Paratungstate Self-Reduction

Thermal cracking: Modern high-pressure thermal cracking operates at absolute pressures of about 7,000 kPa. An overall process of disproportionation can be observed, where "light", hydrogen-rich products are formed at the expense of heavier molecules which condense and are depleted of hydrogen. The actual reaction is known as homolytic fission and produces alkenes, which are the basis for the economically important production of polymers.
 
Thermal cracking is currently used to "upgrade" very heavy fractions or to produce light fractions or distillates, burner fuel and/or petroleum coke. Two extremes of the thermal cracking in terms of product range are represented by the high-temperature process called "steam cracking" or pyrolysis (ca. 750 °C to 900 °C or higher) which produces valuable ethylene and other feedstocks for the petrochemical industry, and the milder-temperature delayed coking (ca. 500 °C) which can produce, under the right conditions, valuable needle coke, a highly crystalline petroleum coke used in the production of electrodes for the steel and aluminium industries.
 
William Merriam Burton developed one of the earliest thermal cracking processes in 1912 which operated at 700–750 °F (371–399 °C) and an absolute pressure of 90 psi (620 kPa) and was known as the Burton process. Shortly thereafter, in 1921, C.P. Dubbs, an employee of the Universal Oil Products Company, developed a somewhat more advanced thermal cracking process which operated at 750–860 °F (399–460 °C) and was known as the Dubbs process. The Dubbs process was used extensively by many refineries until the early 1940s when catalytic cracking came into use.
 
Hydrogen produced in the cracking process of heated ammonium paratungstate is used for the self-reduction of the cracked products. This paper studies the impacts on blue tungsten oxide's properties by the major reduction parameters,including temperature and rotary kiln speed without Ammonia or hydrogen. The application of this technology to environmental protection,energy conservation and production safety are focused.

Radioactive Source Species With Tungsten Alloy Radiation Shielding Materials

The development of economy impels many countries to explore in the new energy sectors more and more frequent. Discovery and exploration of new energy sources will also lead humanity to enter a new developing pattern. Nuclear energy as a clean and modern economic energy can be mass produced, but also accompanied by a series of nuclear waste radioactive source pollution.The common radioactive sources in nuclear reactor project are α-rays, β-rays, γ-rays, neutrons, protons, heavy hydrogen nucleus and so on. They are with highly radioactivity, and do great harm to the human bodies. In addition, there are a number of radioactive substances, such as fission products (FP) radiation and their decay products (decay radiation) etc. Among these radioactive sources, γ-rays and neutrons is harmful to human bodies second to none, because both have stronger penetrating force. In addition to harm the human beings, radioactive source also can go through the surrounding objects so that makes the original non-radioactive objects become another radioactive medium. Therefore, when designing nuclear radiation shielding, γ-ray and neutron shielding should be first concerned.
 
For γ-rays, if the atomic number of radiation shielding material is higher, the radiation shielding effect will be better, such as iron, tungsten, lead, depleted uranium, concrete, brick, ionized water and so on. Especially for tungsten alloy, which is the best material, that can used as radiation shielding. But for neutrons, because of its cross section will change complexly with the elements and the ability of the neutron, so it doesn’t mean that the higher the material atomic number is,the greater the radiation shielding effect will be. On the contrary, a small atomic number elements can make neutron elastic scattering radiation dose significantly reduced. The study found that the tungsten alloy with 10cm thickness can shield the neutron radiation shielding rate of 93%.
tungsten-alloy-shielding-container

 

Ammonium Paratungstate Detinning Processes

Various detinning processes of ammonium paratungstate mainly focus on removing tin acid radical(SnO32-) in sodium tungstate solution. It is depends on the characteristics of tungsten concentrates our country use currently. Tin impurities of tungsten concentrates  mainly occurs as SnO2, tin mainly occurs as tin acid radical in the alkali immersion from ore alkali decomposition :

SnO2 + 2OH -= SnO32- + H2O.

Currently, in the occasion that China's tungsten smelting uses high quality tungsten concentrates, since the content of tin impurities in the ore is not high (0.1% to 0.4%) and it’s a monomorphic form mainly as SnO2, the content of tin impurities in leaching solution is not too high. High-quality products APT can be produced if any of detinning processes is taken in tungsten smelting process. Of course, each tin process also has negative impacts, primarily the balance between detinning rate and tungsten loss rate. Although some processes have higher detinning rate, tungsten loss is still serious. In addition, each process has shortcomings such as complex process. Also,there’re great impacts on the production cycle, production cost and process route complexity since the addition of detinning process.

At the same time, it is worth noting that, with the increasing scarcity of high-quality tungsten concentrates available for the exploitation of resources to maintain the tin content and other impurities increasing, more and more complex forms, tungsten concentrate in tin Occurrence Sometimes no longer SnO2-based, but in the state of tin SnO2 and sulfide (Stannite Cu2FeSnS4; SnS2 tin sulfide, etc.) coexist. When alkali leaching by reaction:

3SnS2 + 6OH= 2SnS32- + Sn (OH) 62-,

It’s found that thiosulfate tin ions (SnS32- ) appear in sodium tungstate solution while the content of tin acid radical increased . In the current production, thiosulfate tin ions are the main reason for excessive tin impurities in product APT. Therefore, the development direction of detinning process should focus on removing thiosulfate tin ion, taking into account not long tungsten smelting process, without reducing the tungsten recovery. This study is little domestic, overseas it has also not been reported. This author has conducted systematic research to study the existing ratio of tin thiosulfate solution acid radical relationship with the pH of the solution, thio tin acid radical removal methods, but only in the exploratory stage, but also we hope to have more metallurgy workers joined the ranks of this study.

APT

Tungsten Alloy Radioactive Source Container

In recent years, with the gradual development and maturity of China's scientific research and technology, the radioisotopes and radiation application technology have been developed rapidly, but coming along with the safety problems which caused by radioactive sources. As we all know, radioactive source does great harm to human being’s health and our survival environment. According to the degrees of harms, the radioactive sources can be divided into five categories from high to low. One level is the most harmful class of radioactive sources, radioactive fifth is the smallest. So, what is radioactive resource? Radioactive source is a solid radioactive material that should be permanently sealed in a tight container (except the research reactors and power reactors nuclear fuel cycling). In other words, this harmful solid radioactive material need to be stored in sealed containers, but how to ensure the radioactive sources that won’t leak from this container, it makes the choice of radioactive container become a vital problem.
 
According to the preliminary statistics of authorities, China's existing wasting radioactive sources are about 25,000, and there were 2000 pieces existing in the environment in where the human beings live, and had been out of control, threatened to human health and safety like an invisible bomb.
 
Tungsten alloy (containing tungsten content of 85% to 99%) is a kind of alloy that constituted by adding a small amount of cobalt, nickel, copper, iron elements and so on, it also can be called heavy alloy or high density tungsten alloy. As the name suggests, tungsten alloy has a high density, which making it become the perfect materials for producing radioactive source containers. Because if the material has a high density, it can better prevent the leakage of radioactive source, then it also can eliminate safety hazards and make the radioactive source kept safely in the container.
tungsten-alloy-shielding-container

 

 

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