What is it about?
Radioactive carbon-14, in the form of 14-CO2, is an off-gas component at nuclear fuel reprocessing plants. Decontamination of the off-gas, by removing the radioactive 14-CO2, is necessary at any nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. A barium slurry reactor was found to markedly increase decontamination factors relative to calcium hydroxide reactors; overall reaction mechanisms were postulated.
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Why is it important?
This is important because proper off-gas decontamination is important for any nuclear reactor or nuclear fuel reprocessing cycle. Carbon-14 has a relatively long half-life (5730 years), a long residence time in the atmosphere and hydrosphere, a high isotopic exchange rate and ease of assimilation into living matter. For these important reasons, it is necessary to control its release from nuclear facilities
Perspectives
A barium hydroxide slurry reactor enabled much greater conversion and decontamination factors, relative to a calcium hydroxide reactor. Plug flow, back-mixed, and various degrees of mixed-flow were used to model both barium and calcium hydroxide slurry carbonation reactor performance. Ba(OH)2 slurry reactors could not be characterized by using simple plug-flow or simple backmixed flow models. Ba(OH)2 slurries produced an increase In CO2 removal efficiency with increasing solids concentration, whereas the opposite behavior was noted for Ca(OH)2 slurries. Overall reaction mechanisms were postulated. To add a comment relative to modern-day negative emissions technologies (NET), barium hydroxide could be considered as a novel reactant for a direct air capture (DAC) process of ≈400 ppm atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). Technical and economic performance of such a barium hydroxide-based DAC sorption process would have to be compared to Carbon Engineering's (CE) existing potassium hydroxide-based DAC process.
Mr Keith D. Patch
Independent Self Publishing
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Analysis of barium hydroxide and calcium hydroxide slurry carbonation reactors, May 1980, Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI),
DOI: 10.2172/5201190.
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