Computationally-Aided Design of a Small-Scale Radioactive Waste Glass Melter
To provide mission support to the Hanford Waste Immobilization and Treatment Plant for the vitrification of legacy nuclear tank waste, a reduced-scale vitrification pilot system is being designed to process simulated and actual radioactive tank wastes. The tank waste will be separated into high-level waste (HLW) and low-activity waste (LAW) fractions, where the majority by mass (~90%) is LAW and by activity (>95%) is HLW. The first tank waste to be processed at the WTP will be LAW. Since Hanford tank waste and the resultant melter feed compositions are known to vary widely, pilot-scale operations are essential to identify potential problems, provide needed data, confirm assumptions, and determine impacts to full-scale melters and off-gas systems from these different feeds. In addition, the reduced-scale melter system must be capable of quickly providing results to operations without the typically high costs of radioactive operations and provide an engineering platform in close proximity to local operations staff. The objective is to produce similar process conditions to those encountered in the full-scale LAW melters and minimize the volume of radioactive waste necessary for the evaluations. To this end, melter design features are being explored to increase production without significantly increasing surface area, melter glass volumes or compromising data quality. In support of these objectives, a set of computational fluid dynamic models have been developed to provide insight into the flow patterns within these small melters and evaluate design features to increase production without significantly increasing glass inventory. Computed velocities were evaluated at the interface between the cold cap and the molten glass pool and within the bulk glass pool. A method was developed to correlate results to an estimated melt rate and down-select design features that produce the highest gains.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1615733
- Report Number(s):
- INL/CON-20-57511-Rev000
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Wast Management Symposium 2020, Phoenix Az, 03/08/2020 - 03/12/2020
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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