A Study to Estimate Tritium Concentrations of 1 Bq/L or Lower in Water Samples

To measure low tritium concentrations in environmental water samples, it is necessary to enrich them by electrolysis. We attempted electrolytic enrichment under the following conditions: (1) A standard water cell and sample water cell are connected in series and enriched using solid polymer electrolytic film (SPE film). (2) The apparatus constant obtained from the standard cell was used to estimate the tritium concentration in the sample water. (3) SPE film was replaced and the electrolytic cell was dismantled, cleaned and set up for every run.

We repeated electrolytic enrichments for three different water samples with four replicates per sample. Results confirmed that this method is valid for the estimation of tritium concentrations in environmental water samples.