Project/Area Number |
16510044
|
Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
|
Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
Section | 一般 |
Research Field |
Risk sciences of radiation/Chemicals
|
Research Institution | Kyoritsu University of Pharmacy |
Principal Investigator |
MORITA Yuko Kyoritsu University of Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Assistant Professor, 薬学部, 講師 (80245448)
|
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
MURAKAMI Isao Kyoritsu University of Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Instructor, 薬学部, 助手 (50286407)
|
Project Period (FY) |
2004 – 2005
|
Project Status |
Completed (Fiscal Year 2005)
|
Budget Amount *help |
¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥300,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000)
|
Keywords | air luminescence / radon / nitrogen |
Research Abstract |
Air luminescence method has been applied for the determination of ^<222>Rn and the daughter nuclides. In order to improve light collection, the two photo-multiplier tubes (PMTs) were enclosed in a light-tight chamber and covered with reflectors. The pulses from the PMTs were fed into an amplifier, a coincidence circuit, a 1024-channel pulse height analyzer. Discrimination between noise pulses and pulses from real luminescence events was satisfactory. The counting efficiency of this system using a standard alpha-emitting nuclide (^<241>Am) and known amounts of ^<222>Rn was found to be 2.4 and 7.38%, respectively. This difference in counting efficiencies may be attributed to the fact that ^<222>Rn is accompanied by two short-lived alpha-emitting daughter nuclides (^<218>Po, ^<214>Po). Luminescence observed in this study is attributed to the ionization and excitation of nitrogen and oxygen caused by the passage of alpha-particles in air. Therefore, the counting efficiency for nitrogen luminescence and oxygen luminescence was also measured using a liquid scintillation system and found to be 60.2 and 28.2%, respectively. Based on the relatively high counting efficiency of nitrogen luminescence, an effective method for sampling environmental ^<222>Rn in air was developed : After removal of CO_2 and O_2 from air, ^<222>Rn and nitrogen gas in air was cooled to ca.-195.82℃ using an apparatus for liquefaction of nitrogen gas. Thus, concentrated environmental ^<222>Rn was collected together with nitrogen and easily measured by this method.
|