Development of tritiated vapor absorbent applicable to the atmospheric detritiation system in a nuclear facility

The combination of hydrogen oxidation reactor packed noble metal catalysts and water vapor absorber has been applied to the atmospheric detritiation system of the tritium handling facility. Commercial synthetic zeolite such as molecular sieve 5A has been used as an adsorbent of ADS absorber. In the case of application of molecular sieve 5A to the ADS absorber of a large-scale tritium handling facility such as a future fusion plant, an absorber becomes huge due mainly to the difficulty in dehydration from molecular sieve 5A. Hence, application of CaY Faujasite-type zeolite with a high framework silica-to-alumina ratio to the adsorbent for atmospheric detritiation system was investigated. It was clear that the dehydration behavior at room temperature was significantly improved using CaY zeolite. In contrast, detritiation factor for CaY zeolite with a high framework silica-to-alumina ratio depended strongly on the space velocity through the absorber. To apply CaY zeolite with a high framework SiO2/Al2O3 ratio to the ADS absorbent, the space velocity less than 250 h−1 was recommended to maintain the detritiation factor more than 1000. The steep increase in water adsorption at the relative pressure lower than 0.05 is a feature of synthetic zeolite with calcium cation. However, such an increase was not observed in water adsorption on CaY zeolite with a framework SiO2/Al2O3 ratio more than 7.0. Consequently, the CaY zeolite with the framework SiO2/Al2O3 ratio of 5.0 is a promising candidate as absorbent of ADS absorber.