24 research outputs found
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Status Report on Phase Identification in Hanford Tank Sludges
The US Department of Energy plans to vitrify Hanford's tank wastes. The vitrified wastes will be divided into low-activity and high-level fractions. There is an effort to reduce the quantity of high-activity wastes by removing nonradioactive components because of the high costs involved in treating high-level waste. Pretreatment options, such as caustic leaching, to selectively remove nonradioactive components are being investigated. The effectiveness of these proposed processes for removing nonradioactive components depends on the chemical phases in the tank sludges. This review summarizes the chemical phases identified to date in Hanford tank sludges
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Architectural Design Criteria for f-Block Metal Ion Sequestering Agents Final Report
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Pretreatment Engineering Platform Phase 1 Final Test Report
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) was tasked by Bechtel National Inc. (BNI) on the River Protection Project, Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (RPP-WTP) project to conduct testing to demonstrate the performance of the WTP Pretreatment Facility (PTF) leaching and ultrafiltration processes at an engineering-scale. In addition to the demonstration, the testing was to address specific technical issues identified in Issue Response Plan for Implementation of External Flowsheet Review Team (EFRT) Recommendations - M12, Undemonstrated Leaching Processes.( ) Testing was conducted in a 1/4.5-scale mock-up of the PTF ultrafiltration system, the Pretreatment Engineering Platform (PEP). Parallel laboratory testing was conducted in various PNNL laboratories to allow direct comparison of process performance at an engineering-scale and a laboratory-scale. This report presents and discusses the results of those tests
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Caustic leaching of composite AZ-101/AZ-102 Hanford tank sludge
To reduce the quantity (and hence the cost) of glass canisters needed for disposing of high-level radioactive wastes from the Hanford tank farms, pretreatment processes are needed to remove as much nonradioactive material as possible. This report describes the results of a laboratory-scale caustic leaching test performed on a composite derived from a combination of 241-AZ-101 and 241-AZ-102 Hanford Tank sludges. The goals of this FY 1996 test were to evaluate the effectiveness of caustic leaching on removing key components from the sludge and to evaluate the effectiveness of varying the free-hydroxide concentrations by incrementally increasing the free hydroxide concentration of the leach steps up to 3 {und M} free hydroxide. Particle-size analysis of the treated and untreated sludge indicated that the size and range of the sludge particles remained essentially unchanged by the caustic leaching treatment. Both before and after caustic leaching, a particle range of 0.2 {micro}m to 50 {micro}m was observed, with mean particle diameters of 8.5 to 9 {micro}m based on the volume distribution and mean particle diameters of 0.3 to 0.4 {micro}m based on the number distribution
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Development and Demonstration of a Sulfate Precipitation Process for Hanford Waste Tank 241-AN-107
A series of precipitation experiments were conducted on Hanford waste tank 241-AN-107 samples in an effort to remove sulfate from the matrix. Calcium nitrate was added directly to AN-107 sub-samples to yield several combinations of Ca:CO{sub 3} mole ratios spanning a range of 0:1 to 3:1 to remove carbonate as insoluble CaCO{sub 3}. Similarly barium nitrate was added directly to the AN-107 aliquots, or to the calcium pretreated AN-107 aliquots, giving of Ba:SO{sub 4} mole ratios spanning a range of 1:1 to 5:1 to precipitate sulfate as BaSO{sub 4}. Initial bulk carbonate removal was required for successful follow-on barium sulfate precipitation. A {ge} 1:1 mole ratio of Ca:CO{sub 3} was found to lower the carbonate concentration such that Ba would react preferentially with the sulfate. A follow-on 1:1 mole ratio of Ba:SO{sub 4} resulted in 70% sulfate removal. The experiment was scaled up with a 735-mL aliquot of AN-107 for more complete testing. Calcium carbonate and barium sulfate settling rates were determined and fates of selected cations, anions, and radionuclides were followed through the various process steps. Seventy percent of the sulfate was removed in the scale-up test while recovering 63% of the filtrate volume. Surprisingly, during the scale-up test a sub-sample of the CaCO{sub 3}/241-AN-107 slurry was found to lose fluidity upon standing for {le} 2 days. Metathesis with BaCO{sub 3} at ambient temperature was also evaluated using batch contacts at various BaCO{sub 3}:SO{sub 4} mole ratios with no measurable success