Heavy-ion fragmentation at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Lab (NSCL) creates an abundance of useful radionuclides. Since the facility is specifically designed to deliver one exotic-nuclear species at a time to nuclear physics experiments, the remainder of the radionuclides are unused and are left to decay. Our purpose is to take advantage of these unutilized reaction products by desigining chemical "harvesting" and purification systems that will allow them to be extracted as a part of normal NSCL operation. Already-proof-of-principle harvesting has been demonstrated with 24Na, 67Cu, 85Kr, and 48V in dedicated experiments. The next step is to operate the harvesting equipment while the primary nuclear physics experiments are running. This requires a new water-cooled beamstop, where unused radionuclides will be collected and transported to purification systems-- like ion exchange resin beds and membrane contactors. The design of the beam-stop and the purification systems will be presented, along with plans for purifying the mixed stream of products, and potential uses.

Progress towards online isotope harvesting at the NSCL

254th National Meeting (2017)

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