About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
MS&T25: Materials Science & Technology
|
| Symposium
|
Glasses and Optical Materials: Challenges, Advances, and Applications
|
| Presentation Title |
Development of Sulfur Melter Tolerance Apparatus for Hanford Nuclear Waste Vitrification |
| Author(s) |
Jose Marcial |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
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| Abstract Scope |
The Hanford site, located in southeastern Washington State houses nearly 200,000 cubic meters of nuclear waste stored in subterranean tanks. The supernate and saltcake from the waste tanks will be mixed with glass forming chemicals (GFCs), comprising primarily boric acid and silica, and vitrified as low activity waste (LAW) glass. Similarly the sludge heel will be mixed with GFCs and vitrified into high-level waste (HLW) glass. These two waste vectors significantly vary in chemistry. Therefore, no singular glass composition can be utilized for LAW or HLW waste streams. Both LAW and HLW glass-forming melts have limited sulfur solubility and if exceeded can partition from the bulk melt into a salt-rich surface layer with detrimental impact to the melter refractory lifetime. Various laboratory studies have been developed to study sulfur solubility in glass-forming melts. For this work, we will present the development of a slurry-fed laboratory based. This method seeks to provide more prototypical conditions relative to traditional crucible tests while remaining cost-effective and high throughput. This method was benchmarked with LAW melter feed slurries previously tested by crucible scale tests and large scale melter runs. Opportunities for further development will also be discussed. |