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Ulrika Backman, Maija Lipponen, Ari Auvinen, Unto Tapper, Riitta Zilliacus, Jorma K. Jokiniemi

On the transport and speciation of ruthenium in high temperature oxidising conditions

In this paper, the transport and speciation of ruthenium under
conditions simulating an air ingress accident was studied. Ruthenium dioxide
was exposed to an oxidising environment at high temperatures
(>1200 °C) in a tubular flow furnace. At these conditions,
volatile ruthenium species were formed. A major part of the released
ruthenium was deposited in the tube as RuO₂. Depending on the
experimental conditions, 12–35 wt. % of the released ruthenium was
trapped in the outlet filter as RuO₂ particles. At completely dry
conditions using stainless steel tubes, only 0.1–0.2 wt. % of the
released ruthenium reached the trapping bottle as gaseous
RuO₄. However, when alumina was applied as tube material or the
atmosphere contained some water vapour and silver seed particles, the
fraction of gaseous ruthenium reaching the trapping bottle increased to 5
wt. % which is close to thermodynamic equilibrium. This indicates that RuO₂ does not catalyse the decomposition of RuO₄.

Radiochimica Acta, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag

Print ISSN: 0033-8230
Volume: 93, 05/2005
Pages: 297 - 304

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