Use of recovered cold nitrogen for tritium separation plant safety and environmental protection

This work started with the identification of some operating parameters deviations from the purification module of the Pilot Detritiation Plant, in confront with their design levels, namely: the tritiated heavy water vapor degree of retention in the deuterium flow was more than 5 ppm, less than the design value of max. 2 ppm; the cooling duration from 128 °C to the 20 °C was 20 h, more than the design value of max. 5 h. On meeting these challenges we came up with the proposal of cold nitrogen utilization to increase the adsorption specific capacity of the molecular sieve, on one hand, and to shorten its cooling time after regeneration, on the other hand. eoretical model of this solution was made by using Langmuir theory and then its validation was done experimentally by cooling one of the two adsorbers with cold nitrogen vapors coming from the liquid nitrogen tank; in the second part of the experiment the adsorber was replaced with an experimental cryoadsorber. r we present a number of other opportunities that this solution brings, such as: reducing the risk of fire/explosion in the nuclear detritiation plant, environmental protection by increasing the efficiency and availability of the atmospheric detritiation system, solving the problem of dismantling, transport and storing contaminated adsorbers in the event of radiological accident, easier decontamination in flushing the installation with water and significantly mitigate the risk of radiation for the operators that participate in this operation.