Plasma-Chemical Destruction of Trilaurylamine Issued from Nuclear Laboratories of Reprocessing Plants

Trilaurylamine (TLA) and dodecane (i.e., hydrogenated tetrapropylene HTP) are used in laboratories of nuclear fuel reprocessing control laboratories to extract specific radionuclides such as plutonium at a certain valence. The spent solvents issued from laboratories are generally not compatible by nature and activity with the effluent pathway installed on site to treat the major industrial solvent. Spent TLA is a radioactive liquid waste and must be mineralized separately before conditioning. A new process is proposed and studied with pure TLA. It requires the strongly oxidizing species (HO(bullet), HO2(bullet), and O3) created in a humid air plasma of the gliding arc (i.e., "glidarc") type at atmospheric pressure. Two kinds of reactors were studied, using batch and pump-recycled targets, respectively.