Efficiency of contactors
The Savannah River Plant has two separations plants that began Purex operations in 1954 and 1955 with pump-mix mixer-settlers as contactors to process nuclear fuels. The only changes to the extraction equipment were replacement of most of the mixer-settlers in one plant with larger units in 1959, and the further replacement of the large 1A bank with a bank of rapid-contact centrifugal contactors in 1966. Improved performance of the old units has become highly desirable, and an experimental program is underway. Good contact between the phases, and adequate settling without entrainment of the opposite phase are required for high efficiency operation of the mixer-settlers. Factors that determine efficiency are mixer design, drop size generated, and phase coalescence properties. The original development work and accumulated plant data confirm that the tip speed of a given impeller design determines the throughput capacity and extraction performance. An experimental unit with three full-scale stages has been constructed and is being utilized to test different impeller designs; reduced pumping and better mixing with lower speeds appear to be the key factors for improvement. Decontamination performance of the rapid-contact centrifugal contactors is limited by the number of scrub contacts and the time of contact because of slowly equilibrating fission product species. Where solvent degradation is not a factor, the longer scrub contact of mixer-settlers gives better decontamination than the centrifugals. This kinetic effect can be overcome with long scrub contacts that follow the initial short extraction and short scrub contacts in the centrifugal contactors. A hybrid experimental unit with both rapid contact sections and longer contact scrub sections is under development to establish the degree of improvement that might be attained.
- Research Organization:
- Savannah River Lab., Aiken, SC (USA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC09-76SR00001
- OSTI ID:
- 5371196
- Report Number(s):
- DP-MS-85-67; CONF-860921-4; ON: DE86015706
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ISEC '86: international solvent extraction conference, Munich, F.R. Germany, 11 Sep 1986
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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