Yttrium-88 glass microsphere: A potential radiotracer for radioactive particle tracking applications

Radioactive microspheres play an important role in deciphering flow dynamics and micro mixing in multiphase chemical process reactors through a technique known as computer assisted radioactive particle tracking (CARPT). In the present study, radioactive microsphere of yttrium-88 having size 500-1500 μm have been prepared for their potential application in CARPT. The yttrium-88 radioactive microsphere (YRM) have been prepared in two steps. First the inactive glass microparticles containing strontium termed strontium glass microspheres (SMSs) were prepared by melt-quench combined with microwave method. Subsequently, in the second step, the SMSs were irradiated with 12 Mev proton beam from an accelerator to produce YRM. The SMSs were characterized with UV-vis spectroscopy, FTIR, XRF, TG-DSC, XRD, SEM and EDX for analysis of the nature of bonding, physical properties, surface morphology and elemental composition. The activity on a single YRM was measured to be 10.54 - 20.33 MBq, which is adequate for its application for the CARPT.