Engineering Monosodium Titanate for Adsorption Column Processes

Conference · Wed Nov 17 04:00:00 EST 2004

OSTI ID:836882

NASH, CHARLES

Monosodium titanate (MST) is an inorganic adsorbent powder that effectively removes strontium, plutonium, neptunium, and other trace elements from alkaline high-level waste (HLW) supernate. This work tested one commercial titanate and four general methods to engineer MST into particles large enough to use in adsorption columns. The most successful of the engineered products selected from batch contact and chemical stability testing succeeded in treating 2900 bed volumes (BV) of simulated salt waste containing dissolved plutonium and strontium. There was no detectable strontium breakthrough and only 6 per cent plutonium breakthrough--well within the processing goal--at the end of the demonstration which operated at 5.3 BV/hour. Additional column tests at nominally 15 BV/hr demonstrated similar removal performance. Batch testing of adsorbents used both actual Savannah River Site (SRS) tank supernate as well as simulated salt solutions spiked with strontium, neptunium, and plutonium. In tank waste tests, internal gelation beads produced by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) demonstrated a batch distribution coefficient of 35,000 +/- 4,000 mL/g for plutonium at a phase ratio of 1970 mL/g. In the same batch the sorbent demonstrated a batch distribution coefficient of 99,000 +/- 7,500 mL/g for strontium. These results indicate that this material should be able to process thousands of bed volumes of SRS salt waste before column breakthrough.

• Research Organization: Savannah River Site (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: US Department of Energy (US)
• DOE Contract Number: AC09-96SR18500
• OSTI ID: 836882
• Report Number(s): WSRC-MS-2004-00790
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE WASTES FROM NUCLEAR FACILITIES
ADSORBENTS
ADSORPTION
ELEMENTS
GELATION
HIGH-LEVEL WASTE (HLW): COMMERCIAL TITANATE
MONOSODIUM TITANATE (MST)
NEPTUNIUM
PLUTONIUM
PROCESSING
REMOVAL
STABILITY
STRONTIUM
TANKS
TESTING
TITANATES
TRACE AMOUNTS
WASTE MANAGEMENT