Pilot-Scale Testing of a Spin Tek Rotary Microfilter With Welded Disks and Simulated Savannah River Site High Level Waste
The Department of Energy is developing processes to treat Savannah River Site (SRS) radioactive waste. In the first step, personnel contact the incoming salt solution that contains entrained sludge with monosodium titanate (MST) to adsorb strontium and select actinides. They filter the resulting slurry to remove the sludge and MST. The filtrate receives further treatment to remove cesium. Previously, personnel conducted a review of solid-liquid separation technologies and identified the rotary microfilter as a plausible improvement over the tubular crossflow filter in the current baseline. The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) received funding from the DOE to continue developing the rotary microfilter for SRS high level waste applications. As part of this task, the authors developed a protocol to weld stainless steel and ceramic filter disks. After they welded the disks, they placed them in the pilot-scale rotary microfilter and tested them with simulated SRS waste. The conclusions are: the rotary microfilter has now operated for over 2400 hours with no significant operational problems; filter flux with the welded disks was significantly less than the flux in comparable tests with filter disks fabricated using epoxy; the ceramic filter media produced the highest flux; the Pall filter media produced higher flux than the Mott filter media; MST-only feed filtered at a higher rate than sludge plus MST feed; the Lasaentec(R) data provide insight into the settling behavior of the sludge and MST particles; when agitation resumed, the settled particles re-suspended within a few minutes; the MST-only solids settled more rapidly than the sludge plus MST solids; particle size measurements showed a 25 - 50 percent median particle size reduction during the tests; the median particle size was as much as 35 percent smaller than in previous tests.
- Research Organization:
- Savannah River Site (SRS), Aiken, SC (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC09-96SR18500
- OSTI ID:
- 835579
- Report Number(s):
- WSRC-TR-2004-00213; TRN: US0500084
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 21 May 2004
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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