RadiCatch Hybrid: combining filtration with compact decay storage

As radionuclide therapy grows, hospitals face a practical infrastructure question: how should radioactive wastewater from treatment rooms be managed safely without creating unnecessarily large or complex technical installations?

At Zuyderland, RadiCatch Hybrid combines urine-separating toilets, central radionuclide filtration and compact decay storage of residual liquid wastewater. An innovative infrastructure approach for nuclear medicine departments with multiple therapy rooms.

Rethinking what needs to be stored

Conventional systems typically collect wastewater from the therapy room and retain it in tanks while the radioactivity decays. This is a proven approach, but it can require considerable tank volume, technical space, shielding, piping and control equipment.

RadiCatch Hybrid starts from different questions: how to concentrate the radionuclide activity and why storing all wastewater streams in the same way?

The answer can lead to a much more compact infrastructure, which is cost efficient and environmentally friendly. It also opens flexibility for growth and new radionuclides in therapy.

Separate urine before it reaches the tanks

After radionuclide therapy, a farmost of the administered radioactivity leaves the patient through urine. RadiCatch Hybrid therefore separates this urine stream from other wastewater directly at the source - the patient’s toilet.

Each therapy room is equipped with a urine-separating toilet. Urine is transported through a dedicated line to a central RadiCatch filtration installation. The radionuclides are captured in the filters, while other wastewater streams can be directed to much compacter decay storage.

This creates a different division of streams to manage:

Urine is separated in the toilet and directed to a central filter system. The filter system consists of multiple filters which are in alternated use. Radionuclides are concentrated and retained inside the filters. Urine is clean to go after filtration, or can be stored in the decay compact tanks. The compact decay tanks are intended for residual blackwater (fecal matter, toilet paper, flush water). Exhausted filters remain in the central installation for full decay.

Urine to central filtration

Other wastewater to compact decay storage

Instead of sizing the entire system around storage of all wastewater, filtration and decay storage each handle the streams for which they are best suited.

A compact installation at Zuyderland

This principle is being applied at Zuyderland Medical Center in the Netherlands. Therapy rooms are equipped with urine-separating toilets, connected to a compact technical installation located centrally in the basement. A footprint of only 15 m2 and only 5 m3 of tank capacity was needed.

The configuration makes it possible to serve multiple rooms from one filtration system. Most of the technology therefore remains outside the patient environment, while the rooms themselves require only the urine-separating toilet and the necessary connections.

Compact decay tanks complement the filtration system. Because the concentrated urine stream is treated separately, the tanks have a different role from conventional systems designed to receive the full radioactive wastewater load.

Let radioactivity decay in the filter

Central filtration offers another operational advantage. Once radionuclides have been captured, the used filters do not necessarily need to be replaced and transported immediately.

The filters are located in a shielded technical environment and can remain within the central installation while their radioactive contents decay. Filter replacement, storage and subsequent handling can be incorporated into a controlled technical process. For the hospital, this means that the design is not only about reducing physical infrastructure. It also reduces interaction with radioactive wastewater and radioactive materials. The result is a system designed around a small technical footprint, limited handling and centralised control.

“RadiCatch Hybrid separates the concentrated radioactive urine stream first, allowing filtration and decay storage to each perform a specific function.”

One architecture does not fit every hospital

RadiCatch Hybrid is not intended to replace decentralised RadiCatch systems. The appropriate solution depends on the hospital layout, existing infrastructure, number of treatment rooms, radionuclides used and plans for future capacity.

A stand-alone RadiCatch Toilet Filter System can be particularly valuable where a hospital wants to equip an individual treatment room or day-therapy setting without constructing extensive central wastewater infrastructure.

A FilterBOX can provide another route, for example when filtration is added to an existing decay tank system with insufficient capacity for growth and new radionuclides.

Hybrid becomes particularly relevant when:

a department is being newly built or substantially renovated central technical space is available away from the patient rooms conventional decay-tank capacity would otherwise become a constraint because of footprint, system weight (as in Zuyderland) or otherwise the hospital wants to minimise handling within individual therapy rooms

The objective is therefore not to prescribe one technical solution. It is to select the wastewater architecture that best matches the clinical and physical situation of the hospital.

Infrastructure that can grow with therapy

Rather than starting with the question of how much wastewater a hospital needs to store, the design starts by identifying where the radioactivity is concentrated and how that stream can be managed most effectively.

For some hospitals, fully decentralised filtration provides the greatest flexibility. For others, existing decay tanks can be combined with filtration. And where multiple therapy rooms can share central infrastructure the RadiCatch Hybrid becomes an opportunity.

As radionuclide therapy expands, flexibility and being futureproof becomes increasingly important. Extra treatment capacity does not necessarily have to mean larger wastewater installations.