title: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Trg Dositeja Obradovica 4, Novi Sad, Serbia. bikit@df.uns.ac.rs
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bikit
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Mrda
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Grujic
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Kozmidis-Luburic
mesh_terms: D000396:Air Pollutants, Radioactive / Q000032:analysis*; D003252:Construction Materials / Q000032:analysis*; D006798:Housing; D006801:Humans; D010316:Particle Size; D011886:Radon / Q000032:analysis*; D012822:Silicon Dioxide / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D000396:Air Pollutants, Radioactive; D012822:Silicon Dioxide; D011886:Radon