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Light Weight, Easy Formable and Non-Toxic Polymer-Based Composites for Hard X-ray Shielding: A Theoretical and Experimental Study

Composite lightweight materials for X-ray shielding applications were studied and developed with the goal of replacing traditional screens made of lead and steel, with innovative materials with similar shielding properties, but lighter, more easily formed and workable, with lower impact on the envir...

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Autores principales: Lopresti, Mattia, Alberto, Gabriele, Cantamessa, Simone, Cantino, Giorgio, Conterosito, Eleonora, Palin, Luca, Milanesio, Marco
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7037949/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32012889
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms21030833
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author Lopresti, Mattia
Alberto, Gabriele
Cantamessa, Simone
Cantino, Giorgio
Conterosito, Eleonora
Palin, Luca
Milanesio, Marco
author_facet Lopresti, Mattia
Alberto, Gabriele
Cantamessa, Simone
Cantino, Giorgio
Conterosito, Eleonora
Palin, Luca
Milanesio, Marco
author_sort Lopresti, Mattia
collection PubMed
description Composite lightweight materials for X-ray shielding applications were studied and developed with the goal of replacing traditional screens made of lead and steel, with innovative materials with similar shielding properties, but lighter, more easily formed and workable, with lower impact on the environment and reduced toxicity for human health. New epoxy based composites additivated with barium sulfate and bismuth oxide were designed through simulations performed with softwares based on Geant4. Then, they were prepared and characterized using different techniques starting from digital radiography in order to test the radiopacity of the composites, in comparison with traditional materials. The lower environmental impact and toxicity of these innovative screens were quantified by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) calculation based on the ecoinvent database, within the openLCA framework. Optimized mixtures are (i) 20% epoxy/60% bismuth oxide/20% barite, which guarantees the best performance in X-ray shielding, largely overcoming steel, but higher in costs and a weight reduction of circa 60%; (ii) 20% epoxy/40% bismuth oxide/40% barite which has slightly lower performances in shielding, but it is lighter and cheaper than the first one and (iii) the 20% epoxy/20% bismuth oxide/60% barite which is the cheapest material, still maintaining the X-ray shielding of steel. Depending on cost/efficiency request of the specific application (industrial radiography, aerospace, medical analysis), the final user can choose among the proposed solutions.
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spelling pubmed-70379492020-03-10 Light Weight, Easy Formable and Non-Toxic Polymer-Based Composites for Hard X-ray Shielding: A Theoretical and Experimental Study Lopresti, Mattia Alberto, Gabriele Cantamessa, Simone Cantino, Giorgio Conterosito, Eleonora Palin, Luca Milanesio, Marco Int J Mol Sci Article Composite lightweight materials for X-ray shielding applications were studied and developed with the goal of replacing traditional screens made of lead and steel, with innovative materials with similar shielding properties, but lighter, more easily formed and workable, with lower impact on the environment and reduced toxicity for human health. New epoxy based composites additivated with barium sulfate and bismuth oxide were designed through simulations performed with softwares based on Geant4. Then, they were prepared and characterized using different techniques starting from digital radiography in order to test the radiopacity of the composites, in comparison with traditional materials. The lower environmental impact and toxicity of these innovative screens were quantified by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) calculation based on the ecoinvent database, within the openLCA framework. Optimized mixtures are (i) 20% epoxy/60% bismuth oxide/20% barite, which guarantees the best performance in X-ray shielding, largely overcoming steel, but higher in costs and a weight reduction of circa 60%; (ii) 20% epoxy/40% bismuth oxide/40% barite which has slightly lower performances in shielding, but it is lighter and cheaper than the first one and (iii) the 20% epoxy/20% bismuth oxide/60% barite which is the cheapest material, still maintaining the X-ray shielding of steel. Depending on cost/efficiency request of the specific application (industrial radiography, aerospace, medical analysis), the final user can choose among the proposed solutions. MDPI 2020-01-28 /pmc/articles/PMC7037949/ /pubmed/32012889 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms21030833 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Lopresti, Mattia
Alberto, Gabriele
Cantamessa, Simone
Cantino, Giorgio
Conterosito, Eleonora
Palin, Luca
Milanesio, Marco
Light Weight, Easy Formable and Non-Toxic Polymer-Based Composites for Hard X-ray Shielding: A Theoretical and Experimental Study
title Light Weight, Easy Formable and Non-Toxic Polymer-Based Composites for Hard X-ray Shielding: A Theoretical and Experimental Study
title_full Light Weight, Easy Formable and Non-Toxic Polymer-Based Composites for Hard X-ray Shielding: A Theoretical and Experimental Study
title_fullStr Light Weight, Easy Formable and Non-Toxic Polymer-Based Composites for Hard X-ray Shielding: A Theoretical and Experimental Study
title_full_unstemmed Light Weight, Easy Formable and Non-Toxic Polymer-Based Composites for Hard X-ray Shielding: A Theoretical and Experimental Study
title_short Light Weight, Easy Formable and Non-Toxic Polymer-Based Composites for Hard X-ray Shielding: A Theoretical and Experimental Study
title_sort light weight, easy formable and non-toxic polymer-based composites for hard x-ray shielding: a theoretical and experimental study
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7037949/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32012889
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms21030833
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