Tritium gettering from air with hydrogen uranyl phosphate

Technical Report · Thu Aug 01 04:00:00 EDT 1985

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/5848885· OSTI ID:5848885

Souers, P C; Uribe, F S; Stevens, C G; Tsugawa, T T

The managers of all tritium facilities now worry about their emissions into the atmosphere. The only method for cleaning tritium out of air is to catalyze the formation of tritiated water which is adsorbed, along with the overwhelming bulk of naturally occurring water vapor, on a zeolite molecular sieve. This method generally costs several million dollars for a small system, because of the necessary steel ducting, compressors and holding tanks. We have long had the dream of finding another getter that might be cheaper to use and would, hopefully, not make tritiated water (HTO). In a previous paper, we discovered that hydrogen uranyl phosphate (HUP, with the formula HUO/sub 2/PO/sub 4/ x 4H/sub 2/O) getters 1 ppM of tritium gas out of moist air. This makes HUP the first known ''direct'' tritium getter to work in air. However, the tritium enters a hydroxyl network within the HUP, so that it is effectively still in ''water'' form within the HUP. Worse yet, we found up to 10% tritiated water formed during the previous gettering experiments. HUP is unusual in possessing the exceptionally low vapor pressure of 0.6 torr water vapor at 298/sup 0/K. This allows HUP to be used in fairly dry environments. 14 refs., 3 figs., 2 tabs.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (USA)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-48
• OSTI ID: 5848885
• Report Number(s): UCID-20489; ON: DE86011011
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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ACTINIDE COMPOUNDS
AIR
AIR CLEANING SYSTEMS
BETA DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
BETA-MINUS DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
CHALCOGENIDES
CHEMICAL REACTION YIELD
ENGINEERED SAFETY SYSTEMS
FLUIDS
GASES
GETTERING
GETTERS
HYDROGEN COMPOUNDS
HYDROGEN ISOTOPES
INORGANIC ION EXCHANGERS
ION EXCHANGE MATERIALS
ISOTOPES
LABELLED COMPOUNDS
LIGHT NUCLEI
MATERIALS
MINERALS
NUCLEI
ODD-EVEN NUCLEI
OXIDES
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
PHOSPHATES
PHOSPHORUS COMPOUNDS
RADIOISOTOPES
TRITIUM
TRITIUM COMPOUNDS
TRITIUM OXIDES
URANIUM COMPOUNDS
URANYL COMPOUNDS
URANYL PHOSPHATES
WATER
YEARS LIVING RADIOISOTOPES
YIELDS
ZEOLITES