Identification of radionuclide partitioning in soils and sediments: Determination of optimum conditions for the exchangeable fraction of the nIST standard sequential extraction protocol

We are developing the NIST standard sequential extraction protocol for identifying the fractionation of radioactive elements in soils and sediments. The procedure is designed to partition a soil or sediment sample into six operationally-defined fractions. A full-factorial experimental design/data analysis methodology was used to establish the optimum conditions for the first of these six fractions, called “exchangeables”. Reaction time, reagent concentration and reaction temperature were chosen as experimental variables. The criteria for choosing optimum conditions were the maximum extraction of 238U combined with a minimum dissolution of non-targeted geochemical phases. Reagent concentration (i.e. ionic strength) is shown to be the controlling factor in the extraction of exchangeable 238U. The optimum (exchangeable) conditions, based on these experiments are: time=1 h; temperature=25°C and concentration=0.4 M MgCl2.