Preparation and characterization of 10B boric acid with high purity for nuclear industry

Boric acid is often added into coolant as neutron capture agent for pressurized water reactor, whose amount is influenced by its abundance and purity. Therefore, the preparation of enriched 10B boric acid with high purity is beneficial to nuclear industry. 10B is also used in developing tumor-specific boronated drugs in boron neutron capture therapy. The boronated drug can be administered to patient intravenously, intratumorally, or deposited at tumor site in surgical excision. Thus, enriched 10B boric acid is of practical significance in the field of medicine. Self-made boron trifluoride–methanol-complex solution was selected as one of the experimental reagents, and the preparation of 10B acid was realized by one-step reaction for the complexes with water and calcium chloride. The determination of electrical conductivity in reaction process proves that the optimum reaction time was 16–20 h. Furthermore, the effect of reaction time, ratio of calcium chloride to complex as well as the amount of water on the purity and yield of boric acid was investigated. Finally, the optimum reaction time was 20 h, the optimal solid–liquid ratio (molar ratio) was 3:1, and the amount of water was 1 L of deionized water for each mol of the complex. H2O2 was added in the reaction process to remove Fe2+. After recrystallization, IR spectra of 10B boric acid was measured and compared with standard to verify the product of boric acid. The feasibility of the preparation method was determined by the detection of XRD of boric acid. To observe the morphology by polarizing microscope, crystal structure was obtained. The purity of the final product is 99.95 %, and the yield is 96.47 %. The ion concentration of boric acid accords with the national standard of high purity, which was determined by ICP.