Hydrogen and water vapor adsorption properties on cation-exchanged mordenite for use to a tritium recovery system

Tritium recovery system using adsorption or catalytic isotope exchange has already been proposed for a solid breeding blanket system of a nuclear fusion reactor. Synthetic zeolite is often used as an adsorbent or a substrate of chemical exchange catalyst. And, it is well known that its property is changed easily by exchanging its cations. Synthetic mordenite is one of zeolites having fairly large silica/alumina ratio. There are many reports about hydrogen adsorption properties of cation-exchanged mordenite so far. And, the present authors also have reported that cation-exchanged mordenite with Ca ion (Ca–MOR) indicated fairly large hydrogen adsorption capacity at 77 K in comparison with Molecular Sieves 5A (MS5A). So, in this work, hydrogen adsorption properties of cation-exchanged mordenite with transition metal ion were investigated mainly. The cation-exchanged mordenite with Ag ion (Ag–MOR) has indicated considerably large hydrogen adsorption capacity in lower pressure range at 77 K in comparison with Ca–MOR. The discussion from the viewpoint of adsorption rate is still remaining, but more compact cryosorption column for tritium recovery system is possible to design if Ag–MOR is adopted.