Mechanical design and first experimental results of an upgraded technical PERMCAT reactor for tritium recovery in the fuel cycle of a fusion machine

The PERMCAT process developed for the final clean-up stage of the Tokamak Exhaust Processing systems of the ITER tritium plant combines a catalytic reactor and a Pd/Ag permeator in a single component. A first generation technical PERMCAT has been successfully operated as part of the CAPER experiment at the Tritium Laboratory Karlsruhe for several years. Various alternative PERMCAT mechanical designs were proposed and studied on small-scale prototypes. An upgraded technical PERMCAT reactor was designed, manufactured and commissioned with deuterium. A parallel arrangement of finger-type membranes inserted in a single catalyst bed design was chosen to simplify the geometry and the manufacturing while improving the robustness of the reactor. The component has been designed and manufactured to be fully tritium compatible and also fully compatible with both process and electrical connections of the previous PERMCAT to be replaced. The new PERMCAT mechanical design is more compact and easy to manufacture. This PERMCAT reactor was submitted to functional tests and experiments based on isotopic exchanges between H2O and D2 to measure the processing performances. The first experimental results show decontamination factors versus flow rates better than all previously measured.