Modeling Cst Ion Exchange For Cesium Removal From Scix Batches 1 4

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Download or read book THERMAL PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS FOR SMALL ION-EXCHANGE CESIUM REMOVAL PROCESS. written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The In-Riser Ion Exchange program focuses on the development of in-tank systems to decontaminate high level waste (HLW) salt solutions at the Savannah River Site (SRS) and the Hanford Site. Small Column Ion Exchange (SCIX) treatment for cesium removal is a primary in-riser technology for decontamination prior to final waste immobilization in Saltstone. Through this process, radioactive cesium from the salt solution is adsorbed onto the ion exchange media which is packed within a flow-through column. Spherical Resorcinol-Formaldehyde (RF) is being considered as the ion exchange media for the application of this technology at both sites. A packed column loaded with media containing radioactive cesium generates significant heat from radiolytic decay. Under normal operating conditions, process fluid flow through the column can provide adequate heat removal from the columns. However, in the unexpected event of loss of fluid flow or fluid drainage from the column, the design must be adequate to handle the thermal load to avoid unacceptable temperature excursions. Otherwise, hot spots may develop locally which could degrade the performance of the ion-exchange media or the temperature could rise above column safety limits. Data exists which indicates that performance degradation with regard to cesium removal occurs with RF at 65C. In addition, the waste supernate solution will boil around 130C. As a result, two temperature limits have been assumed for this analysis. An additional upset scenario was considered involving the loss of the supernate solution due to inadvertent fluid drainage through the column boundary. In this case, the column containing the loaded media could be completely dry. This event is expected to result in high temperatures that could damage the column or cause the RF sorbent material to undergo undesired physical changes. One objective of these calculations is to determine the range of temperatures that should be evaluated during testing with the RF media. Although, the safety temperature limit is based on the salt solution boiling point which does not apply in the air-filled case (because there is no liquid), this same limit (130C) is used as a measure for the evaluation of this condition as well. The primary objective of the present work is to develop models to simulate the thermal performance of the RF column design when the media is fully loaded with radioactive cesium and the central cooling tube is excluded. Previous analysis led to the consideration of this design simplification for RF, since the baseline column design with center cooling was developed assuming that CST media would be used for cesium removal which has a higher volumetric heat load. Temperature distributions and maximum temperatures across the column during SCIX process operations and upset conditions were conducted with a focus on SCIX implementation at Hanford. However, a feed composition and cesium loading were assumed which were known to be considerably higher than would typically be observed at Hanford. In order to evaluate the impact of this potentially highly conservative assumption, fractionally-reduced loading cases were also considered. A computational modeling approach was taken to include conservative, bounding estimates for key parameters so that the results would provide the maximum temperatures achievable under the design configurations.