The radon emanation and the granulation effect on the emanation rate of several building materials (ceramic plates, sand, red brick and siporex brick) with different (226)Ra concentrations were investigated. A ball mill was used to achieve different granulations of the materials. The particle size distributions were determined by a particle size analyser (Mastersizer 2000). The increase in the (222)Rn concentration inside a closed chamber (volume ≈5.4 × 10(-3) m(3)) due to emanation from each material with different granulations was measured by an alpha spectrometer (RAD7). Thus, time-dependent curves for radon concentrations were obtained. The highest radon emanation coefficient (27 %) was obtained for the siporex sample with the smallest grain size (0.34 µm). For the ceramic pads, the granulation effect was negligible and the emanation coefficient was very low (∼0.4 %). The strongest influence of granulation on the radon emanation rate was found for the siporex brick sample.
http://rpd.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/04/05/rpd.ncr055.full.pdf+html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21471129