Electropulse column testing

The parallel electrolytic reduction developments at Karlsruhe appear to have concentrated initially more on the reduction of Pu and U in electrode-equipped mixer-settlers in which the reduction occurred largely in the settled aqueous phase rather than in a heterogeneous mixture. It was determined that a separating membrane may njt be necessary because of the redox potentials in the U - U5 - U6 system and the absence of gaseous products at the electrodes which could lead to explosive mixtures. A pulsed column, with internals quite different from those of Allied Chemical s electropulse column, was eventually developed and successfully tested (15,26) (Fig. 4). 

In 1968, an electrolytic reduction process was proposed by A. Schneider and A. L. Ayers (6) to circumvent the above disadvantages. A research program was carried out in the Allied Chemical Corporation s laboratories during the years 1968 to 1972 to develop the process and equipment. The work resulted in the development of the Electropulse Column ( 7) for the continuous (differential) electrolytic uranium-plutonium partition process, which was later scaled up, fabricated, and installed in the Allied-General Nuclear Services reprocessing plant at Barnwell, South Carolina. About the same time, a stagewise electrolytic uranium-plutonium partition process was tested on a mini mixer-settler unit in Germany. (8)... 

The above equation was used for scale-up calculations and design of both the pilot plant and full-scale Electropulse Column. A total of 18 experimental runs for uranium(VI) electrolytic reduction was performed on the 20-cm diameter pilot-scale column. (10) As shown in Figure 4, the predicted reduction efficiency calculated from equation (4) correlated well with the experimental values obtained during these runs. The same good correlation between the predicted and experimental R(u) values was achieved later during cold uranium tests in the full-scale unit (Figure 4). The accuracy of correlation was within the range of 6%. 

The 2.54-cm diameter Electropulse Column shown in Figure 1, after completion of uranium runs, was installed at Battelle Memorial Institute (Columbus, Ohio) for uranium-plutonium partition tests. Six electrolytic runs were made under conditions corresponding to partitioning in the first process cycle to determine the effect of uranium reduction efficiency R(u) on t le separation process. The organic feed contained 80 to 83 grams/L of uranium and 0.71 to 0.82 grams/L of plutonium. The nitric acid concentration in the aqueous feed was 2.5 to 2.8 M and in the organic feed 0.2 to 0.3 M. 

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