Radiation chemistry is a field focused on chemical reactions induced by ionizing radiation. Such reactions are referred to as radiolysis. The production of chemicals using ionizing radiation dates back to 1963 when Dow Inc. began producing ethyl bromide using gamma radiation. In this MSc thesis, we explore the deposition of energy by ionizing radiation in glycerol, methanol, and water using Monte Carlo particle transport methods. We demonstrate the differences in deposited energy based on the irradiated chemical and investigate the impact of additives such as gadolinium, lithium, and boron on deposited energy. We find that the addition of gadolinium increases the overall deposited energy and linear energy transfer. Adding lower concentrations of boron (up to $\approx$ 3 %) increases deposited energy, after which the impact of boron starts to decrease deposited energy. We observe a similar trend for lithium. We find that adding lithium and boron converts low LET radiation to high LET radiation. We have therefore shown that adding gadolinium, boron and lithium increases available energy for chemical reactions. Furthermore, we graphically show the differences in deposited energy for individual particles, such as neutrons, photons, electrons, alpha particles, etc. We find that adding lithium and boron increases the impact of alpha particles on deposited energy. We consider two models: a simple model with a mono-energetic source of neutrons and a TRIGA reactor model. In addition to deposited energy in the TRIGA model, we investigate the probability of deposited energy per interaction for photons and neutrons, attempting to explain the increased probabilities. We show that neutrons have an increased probability due to scattering on atoms of chemicals, while photons have it due to Compton scattering. Using the example of experiments done on irradiation of glycerol and carbon dioxide, we present the use of ionizing radiation and specifically explain the process of generating new chemicals for these two substances.
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