2009 PILOT SCALE FLUIDIZED BED STEAM REFORMING TESTING USING THE THOR (THERMAL ORGANIC REDUCTION) PROCESS: ANALYTICAL RESULTS FOR TANK 48H ORGANIC DESTRUCTION - 10408
The Savannah River Site (SRS) must empty the contents of Tank 48H, a 1.3 million gallon Type IIIA HLW storage tank, to return this tank to service. The tank contains organic compounds, mainly potassium tetraphenylborate that cannot be processed downstream until the organic components are destroyed. The THOR{reg_sign} Treatment Technologies (TTT) Fluidized Bed Steam Reforming (FBSR) technology, herein after referred to as steam reforming, has been demonstrated to be a viable process to remove greater than 99.9% of the organics from Tank 48H during various bench scale and pilot scale tests. These demonstrations were supported by Savannah River Remediation (SRR) and the Department of Energy (DOE) has concurred with the SRR recommendation to proceed with the deployment of the FBSR technology to treat the contents of Tank 48H. The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) developed and proved the concept with non-radioactive simulants for SRR beginning in 2003. By 2008, several pilot scale campaigns had been completed and extensive crucible testing and bench scale testing were performed in the SRNL Shielded Cells using Tank 48H radioactive sample. SRNL developed a Tank 48H non-radioactive simulant complete with organic compounds, salt, and metals characteristic of those measured in a sample of the radioactive contents of Tank 48H. FBSR Pilot Scaled Testing with the Tank 48H simulant has demonstrated the ability to remove greater than 98% of the nitrites and greater than 99.5% of the nitrates from the Tank 48H simulant, and to form a solid product that is primarily alkali carbonate. The alkali carbonate is soluble and, thus, amenable to pumping as a liquid to downstream facilities for processing. The FBSR technology was demonstrated in October of 2006 in the Engineering Scale Test Demonstration (ESTD) pilot scale steam reformer at the Hazen Research Inc. (HRI) facility in Golden, CO. Additional ESTD tests were completed in 2008 and in 2009 that further demonstrated the TTT steam reforming process ability to destroy organics in the Tank 48 simulant and produce a soluble carbonate waste form. The ESTD was operated at varying feed rates and Denitration and Mineralization Reformer (DMR) temperatures, and at a constant Carbon Reduction Reformer (CRR) temperature of 950 C. The process produced a dissolvable carbonate product suitable for processing downstream. ESTD testing was performed in 2009 at the Hazen facility to demonstrate the long term operability of an integrated FBSR processing system with carbonate product and carbonate slurry handling capability. The final testing demonstrated the integrated TTT FBSR capability to process the Tank 48 simulant from a slurry feed into a greater than 99.9% organic free and primarily dissolved carbonate FBSR product slurry. This paper will discuss the SRNL analytical results of samples analyzed from the 2008 and 2009 THOR{reg_sign} steam reforming ESTD performed with Tank 48H simulant at HRI in Golden, Colorado. The final analytical results will be compared to prior analytical results from samples in terms of organic, nitrite, and nitrate destruction.
- Research Organization:
- Savannah River Site (SRS), Aiken, SC (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC09-08SR22470
- OSTI ID:
- 970620
- Report Number(s):
- SRNL-STI-2009-00819; TRN: US1000823
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: WM 2010
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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