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• SI ELEMENT ACTIVE ISOTOPES ACTIVE FULL

The filtered liquids can then be discharged safely into the sewerage system.

SI ELEMENT ACTIVE ISOTOPES ACTIVE FULL

Once the membrane has reached its full absorption capacity, it can be replaced and stored in a way that doesn't take up much space, he explains. "Thanks to our membrane, it's possible to enormously reduce the amount of waste and to store the radiating elements as compact, dry solids," Mezzenga says. Membrane massively reduces volumes of waste It's also necessary to ensure that personnel and the environment are protected from radiation. Hospitals must therefore store the effluents safely and securely in special containers until the radioactivity has dropped to a harmless level. Nevertheless, disposal in the sewerage system is not permitted either for hospital effluents that contain these substances or for human waste from patients treated with them. In most cases, these materials are only slightly radioactive and have a short half-life of just a few hours or days. Medical professionals use radionuclides to treat cancer, for example, or as a contrast agent in imaging procedures.

Storage of radioactive material requires space It removed both elements almost completely from the water. The researchers also tested their filter membrane with a sample of real effluents from a Swiss hospital, which contained radioactive iodine-131 and lutetium-177. Laboratory tests show that the membrane is able to remove radionuclides used in the medical field-technetium-99m, iodine-123 and gallium-68-from water with efficiencies of over 99.8% in just one filtration step.

Their study was recently published in the journal Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology. Over the course of their investigation, the two researchers discovered that their filter is efficient at removing these substances as well. Now, Mezzenga and Bolisetty have used their membrane to purify hospital effluents contaminated with radioactive elements. In a publication at the time, the researchers demonstrated how efficiently their product removes heavy metals, some radioactive elements such as uranium, and precious metals such as gold or platinum from water.įilter also suitable for radioactive isotopes It was four years ago that he and his Senior Scientist Sreenath Bolisetty unveiled their invention of a filter membrane made primarily of denatured whey protein and activated carbon. "If they used our filter, they wouldn't need to," says Raffaele Mezzenga, Professor of Food & Soft Materials at ETH Zurich.