Sorption Properties of Activated Carbons for the Capture of Methyl Iodide in the Context of Nuclear Industry

In the present study, some commercially available activated carbons were evaluated towards the capture methyl iodide in the context of nuclear industry. A specific methodology was implemented in order to establish structure-activity relationships between adsorbent characteristics and its adsorption behavior towards CH3I. On the one hand, the investigated adsorbents were fully characterized by a combination of physico-chemical techniques. On the other hand, CH3I retention performances from batch sorption tests under different conditions (temperature and relative humidity), through the use of a completely original experimental setup, were studied. In this work, two conditions were investigated: (i) T = 35 °C, R.H. = 26 %; (ii) T = 75 °C, R.H. = 30 %. Different trends were obtained depending on the investigated scenario. At ambient conditions (i), CH3I adsorption performances were affected after KI/TEDA impregnation because of partial pore blockage phenomena induced by the presence of impregnants within the microporosity. However, TEDA impregnation was found to be required to enhance the trapping stability and to capture methyl iodide with superior efficiency at higher temperature (ii)