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Evaluation of two extraction chromatography resins for scandium and titanium separation for medical isotope production

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Abstract

Scandium-47 (47Sc) can be used in nuclear medicine as a therapeutic-diagnostic, or “theragnostic,” radioactive medical isotope for cancer detection and treatment. The 47Sc isotope can be produced through the photonuclear reaction 48Ti(γ,p)47Sc by irradiating enriched 48Ti target material. The enriched target material necessary for production is costly; 48TiO2 costs ~ $1550/g, and targets can be > 50 g ($77,500) to produce medically relevant amounts of 47Sc. In order to keep costs low, a highly efficient separation of scandium from bulk titanium is desired, along with efficient methods for recycling the target material. This research is focused on evaluating efficient methods for the separation of scandium from bulk quantities of titanium using commercially available diglycolamide-based and hydroxamate-based extraction chromatography resins (DGA resin and ZR resin, respectively). The sorption of 47Sc and Ti on these resins were investigated at varying concentrations of HNO3, HCl, H2SO4, and HF to explore how they might be used in a large-scale production/processing setting.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Isotope Program, managed by the Office of Science for Isotope R&D and Production and Argonne National Laboratory under U.S. Department of Energy contract DE-AC02-06CH11357. The authors would like to thank Argonne’s Yifen Tsai and the Analytical Chemistry Laboratory for collecting the ICP-MS data and Argonne’s Low Energy Accelerator Facility (LEAF) for irradiating the Ti target material. The submitted manuscript has been created by UChicago Argonne, LLC, Operator of Argonne National Laboratory (“Argonne”). Argonne, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, is operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The U.S. Government retains for itself, and others acting on its behalf, a paid-up nonexclusive, irrevocable worldwide license in said article to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies to the public, and perform publicly and display publicly, by or on behalf of the Government. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan. http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan.

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  1. Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 Cass Ave, Lemont, IL, 60439, USA

    Derek R. McLain, Thomas W. Brossard, Robin De Kruijff, Pavithra H. A. Kankanamalage & David A. Rotsch

  2. Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 5, 2628 CD, Delft, The Netherlands

    Robin De Kruijff

  3. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 1 Bethel Valley Rd, Oak Ridge, TN, 37830, USA

    David A. Rotsch

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  1. Derek R. McLain
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McLain, D.R., Brossard, T.W., De Kruijff, R. et al. Evaluation of two extraction chromatography resins for scandium and titanium separation for medical isotope production. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 332, 553–562 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-023-08783-x

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