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Title: Mechanics of Bubbles in Sludges and Slurries

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/831184· OSTI ID:831184

This project is focusing on key issues associated with the flammable gas safety hazard and its role in safe storage and in future waste operations such as salt-well pumping, waste transfers, and sluicing and retrieval of tank waste. The purpose of this project is to develop a basic understanding of how single bubbles (of flammable gases) behave in representative waste simulants and then develop a framework for predicting macroscopic full-tank behavior from the underlying single-bubble behavior. The specific objectives of this research are as follows: 1. quantitatively describe the interaction of bubbles with waste materials (both sludges and slurries) to understand the physical mechanisms by which barometric pressure changes give rise to a hysteresis between level and pressure 2. develop improved methods for estimating retained gas by properly accounting for the interactions of bubbles with the waste 3. determine how to estimate waste physical properties from the observed hysteresis and the limitations of these estimates 4. determine how barometric pressure fluctuations induce slow upward migration and release of gas bubbles.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA; University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas (US)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) (US)
OSTI ID:
831184
Report Number(s):
EMSP-60451-1999; R&D Project: EMSP 60451; TRN: US200430%%264
Resource Relation:
Other Information: PBD: 1 Jun 1999
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English