Sorption Reference Database (SOREDA)

Funded by:

BGE, the federal company for radioactive waste disposal: EKFuE-21-03-js

Period:

02/2022 – 06/2026

Partners:

• HZDR, Institute of Resourc ecology (coordinator)
• Paul-Scherrer-Institute, Laboratory for Waste Management

People:

Susanne Zechel (FWOA), Frank Bok (Projektleitung, FWOA), Dan Miron (PSI-LES), (Olha Marinich, PSI-LES), Dmitrii Kulik (PSI-LES)

Short description

Sorption on the surfaces of mineral phases is one of the determining retention mechanisms for radionuclides alongside precipitation. Sorption must be regarded as the most effective form of retention, especially in the far field of a repository. A thermodynamic description of sorption and thus the inclusion of aquatic chemistry, including the possibility of incorporating changes in geochemistry into these calculations, is possible using surface complexation modeling (SCM). Despite the extremely successful development of SCM and a large number of publications on investigations of the sorption of various radionuclide-mineral combinations, there is currently no reference database for SCM worldwide.

The aim of the project is to derive a quality-assured reference database for sorption data, store it in a relational database and make it available in the specific formats of geochemical calculation programs. To this end, the experimental data available in the literature on sorption investigations are to be collected, critically evaluated, re-digitized and consistently re-evaluated. The focus is on the use of chemically evident surface species, which enables the derivation of simple but robust SCMs.

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