Performance Test on a New Tritium Purifacation Apparatus

Tritium labeled compounds play an important role in new drug research, including the characteristics of absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion. Uranium is a traditional tritium storage material. The constant decay of tritium in the uranium bed could produce helium which could reduce the purity of tritium and lead to affect the yield of the preparation reaction of labeled compounds. A tritium device was designed and installed in this study. The system debugging and purification of the tritium in the long stored uranium bed were also carried out. After a series of performance test, the p-t curves of deuterium absorption by uranium and p-t curves of desorption(between 400-500 ℃) were measured. The results show that the system has good tightness and the value is 7.8×10^-13 Pa•m3/s of leak detection by helium mass-spectrometer leak detector. According to pressure calculation, the adsorption amount of uranium to deuterium is 240 mL/g. The verification experiment reclaimed the tritium 1.44×10¹³ Bq and calculated the mass percentage of tritium is 53.1% by the volume of helium gas. It is confirmed the feasibility of tritium purification by the system. It has important practical significance and provides reliable tritium gas for the preparation of labeled compounds.