MODEL FOR SR-CS-CA-MG-NA ION-EXCHANGE EQUILIBRIA ON CHABAZITE

Chabazite zeolites are used at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to decontaminate wastewaters containing Sr-90 and Cs-137. Treatability studies show that chabazite can remove trace amounts of these nuclides from wastewaters containing much higher concentrations of calcium and magnesium. The design of ion-exchange columns for multicomponent systems requires a method for predicting multicomponent equilibria from binary, ternary and quaternary experiments, since the number of experiments required for an empirical equilibrium model is not generally feasible. Binary interaction parameters for the Wilson equation are used to predict solid-phase activity coefficients for the five-component system. The sum of squares of deviations between experimental and predicted solution concentrations for the data points available is calculated. The average deviation per data point for the five-component system is lower than for some of the ternary- and four-component data sets containing calcium or magnesium.