Testing of a benchscale Reverse Osmosis/Coupled Transport system for treating contaminated groundwater

Conference · Sat Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1994

OSTI ID:39792

Hodgson, K M; Lunsford, T R; Panjabi, G

The Reverse Osmosis/Coupled Transport process is a innovative means of removing radionuclides from contaminated groundwater at the Hanford Site. Specifically, groundwater in the 200 West Area of the Hanford Site has been contaminated with uranium, technetium, and nitrate. Investigations are proceeding to determine the most cost effective method to remove these contaminants. The process described in this paper combines three different membrane technologies (reverse osmosis, coupled transport, and nanofiltration to purify the groundwater while extracting and concentrating uranium, technetium, and nitrate into separate solutions. This separation allows for the future use of the radionuclides, if needed, and reduces the amount of waste that will need to be disposed of. This process has the potential to concentrate the contaminants into solutions with volumes in a ratio of 1/10,000 of the feed volume. This compares to traditional volume reductions of 10 to 100 for ion exchange and stand-alone reverse osmosis. The successful demonstration of this technology could result in significant savings in the overall cost of decontaminating the groundwater.

• Research Organization: Westinghouse Hanford Co., Richland, WA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: AC06-87RL10930
• OSTI ID: 39792
• Report Number(s): WHC-SA--2755; CONF-950646--2; ON: DE95005984
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
DECONTAMINATION
GROUND WATER
HANFORD RESERVATION
MEMBRANE TRANSPORT
MEMBRANES
NITRATES
OSMOSIS
TECHNETIUM
TESTING
URANIUM