Granulation effects on the radon emanation rate

Abstract

The radon emanation and the granulation effect on the emanation rate of several building materials (ceramic plates, sand, red brick and siporex brick) with different (226)Ra concentrations were investigated. A ball mill was used to achieve different granulations of the materials. The particle size distributions were determined by a particle size analyser (Mastersizer 2000). The increase in the (222)Rn concentration inside a closed chamber (volume ≈5.4 × 10(-3) m(3)) due to emanation from each material with different granulations was measured by an alpha spectrometer (RAD7). Thus, time-dependent curves for radon concentrations were obtained. The highest radon emanation coefficient (27 %) was obtained for the siporex sample with the smallest grain size (0.34 µm). For the ceramic pads, the granulation effect was negligible and the emanation coefficient was very low (∼0.4 %). The strongest influence of granulation on the radon emanation rate was found for the siporex brick sample.