• Environmental Engineering Research
• /
• v.13 no.4
• /
• pp.165-168
• /
• 2008

Measurements of phosphatase activity in peatlands are made difficult by the low levels of activity and the characteristically high concentrations of dissolved organic matter within the sediments. These materials may cause high background absorbances in colorimetric assays, and quenching interference in fluorimetric assays. This review describes the development of a new approach which allows such problems to be overcome by using HPLC to separate the interferences from the products of enzymic hydrolysis. This approach is applicable to various environmental samples such as peat, wetland sediment, and sludge which may contain a large amount of interfering organic matters.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.27-33
• /
• 1987

The environment and biological studies of tritium have been carried out in the advanced countries since the mid 1950's. In the case of a potential tritium exposure, the usual procedure is trifium bioassay (as HTO) in human urine in order to determine the amount of tritium deposited in the body called tritium body burden. The maximum permissible body burden(MPBB) of tritium in total body is about $30{\mu}Ci/{\ell}$ for body tissue. In the bioassay, the most common investigation level for detection of tritium in urine is 1/10th of MPBB. For this bioassay project, the first priority is given to obtaining a quench correction curve. This consideration is necessary because of the variability in color of human urine specimens. Quenching effect in this case mainly is caused by the absorption of scintillation light flashes by the urine sample. By the least squares method on the statistical basis, an estimated formula for quench correction curve was determined to be Y = 0.771 + 1.836 ${\tmes}10^{-4}$X, where the efficiency(Y) was ranged from about 12% to 31% in the liquid scientillation counting. In this paper, a brief theory concerning the biological half-life of tritium and the retention formula to apply to systematically distributed tritium are described.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
• /
• v.26 no.4
• /
• pp.375-384
• /
• 2001

It is possible to count and perform quench correction on two ${\beta}$ -label samples so long as the maximum ${\beta}$-energies are sufficiently different. However, when 4he conventional technique is applied to the radioassay of a mixture of more than three nuclides, the reliability of the activities determined is considerably reduced, resulting from the large overlapping of liquid scintillation pulse height distributions of each nuclide. A technique that allows the activities of multiple ${\beta}$-labeled samples to be radioassayed was proposed by using the least square method. The technique was applied to mixture samples of $^3H,\;^{14}C,\;^{36}Cl$, and $^{90}Sr$. The analytical values were in good agreement with the reference values within 7% relative error.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
• /
• v.3 no.3
• /
• pp.193-200
• /
• 2005

[ $^{14}C$ ] and $^{3}H$ in the evaporator bottom (EB) discharged from the Nuclear power plant (NPP) were extracted simultaneously into a gaseous $^{14}CO_{2}$ and liquefied HTO by using the chemical oxidation, which is the method to oxidize samples completely using potassium persulfate and sulfuric acid. The extracted $^{14}C$ and $^{3}H$ were counted by the liquid scintillation counter (LSC) after the quench correction. To examine the recovery of $^{14}C$ using the radioactive standards, $Na_{2}^{14}CO_{3}$, $^{14}C-alcohol$, and $^{14}C-toluene$ as $^{14}C$, and HTO as $^{3}H$ were used. Also, the most suitable method for oxidizing $^{14}C-toluene$, which is difficult to be oxidized, was investigated through FT-IR spectra according to the concentration of sulfuric acid. With the identical method, $^{14}C$ and $^{3}H$ in the EB generated in the NPP were assayed in the range of $8.35{\sim}l.38{\times}10^3$ Bq/g and $2.46{\times}10^2{\sim}1.40{\times}10^4$ Bq/g, respectively.