Precise trace-level determination of anions and cations in the primary and secondary cooling circuits of nuclear power plants

To ensure safe operation, nuclear and conventional power plants require very large quantities of ultrapure water and chemicals.

Monitoring the water quality and the purity of the chemicals used constitutes an important task as insufficient quality can lead to corrosion in the power plant's cooling system and affect the environment.

Ion chromatography is a highly efficient analytical method that can be used for monitoring the quality of water and chemicals. If the method is used in an online setup, the results of the measurements can be used directly for process control. By supplying results quickly, ion chromatography efficiently helps to avoid problems.

Metrohm presents a method that allows to determine safely, accurately and reproducibly, down to the ppt level, cations and anions in primary and secondary cooling circuits. The cations determined comprise the alkali metals besides ammonium and organic amines. As far as anions are concerned, the emphasis was placed on the separation and determination of glycolate, formate and acetate besides the standard anions. The organic anions mentioned are of special interest as they are decomposition products of humic acids.

The high precision that can be achieved even with matrix elimination is made possible by the Dosino technology, which allows extremely precise liquid handling. The presented system is highly flexible, especially as far as concerns the allocation of the sample in any type of sample vessel. The method is suitable for work in the plant laboratory as well as for online operation in the power plant.