Mixing, cryogenic

Zollweg J A 1994 Mixing calorimetry at cryogenic conditions Solution Calorimetry, Experimental Thermodynamics... 

Off-Gas Treatment. Before the advent of the shear, the gases released from the spent fuel were mixed with the entire dissolver off-gas flow. Newer shear designs contain the fission gases and provide the opportunity for more efficient treatment. The gaseous fission products krypton and xenon are chemically inert and are released into the off-gas system as soon as the fuel cladding is breached. Efficient recovery of these isotopes requires capture at the point of release, before dilution with large quantities of air. Two processes have been developed, a cryogenic distillation and a Freon absorption. 

The dephlegmator process recovers a substantially higher purity C2+ hydrocarbon product with 50—75% lower methane content than the conventional partial condensation process. The C2+ product from the cryogenic separation process can be compressed and further separated in a de-ethanizer column to provide a high purity C3+ (LPG) product and a mixed ethylene—ethane product with 10—15% methane. Additional refrigeration for the deethanization process can be provided by a package Freon, propane or propylene refrigeration system. 

Fig. 16.4. Schematic view of the mixing chamber of MiniGRAIL (courtesy of Leiden Cryogenics).

Fig. 16.5. An overview of the minimum temperature of the different elements of the system. An estimate is made on the heat flows Q due to conduction between the different stages that are all connected with stainless steel rods or tubes. The total heat leak on the mixing chamber is estimated to be 45pW. This heat leak decreases in time and comes from the sphere and copper masses. We will see further on that this can be explained by ortho-para conversion of 70 ppm hydrogen impurities in the copper (courtesy of Leiden Cryogenics).

Figure 6.48 Two-dimensional NOESY spectrum (mixing time = 2 s) of the ether glucuronide of 3-methoxy-paracetamol at 600 MHz in a 3-mm cryogenic probe head (total experiment time 20 h). The sample was recovered from a conventional 3-mm LC probe head after a triple trapping SPE-NMR run (result shown in Eigure 6.41). Reproduced from [59] with permission from Elsevier.

Operation of the column oven at 50°C or lower has been a problem in earlier chromatographs because of the difficulty of completely isolating the column oven from other heated components, such as the detector, injection port, and splitter, and still having a usable oven. The processor controller described overcomes this problem by mixing controlled amounts of room air into the column oven and can control very adequately at temperatures of about 30°C without cryogenic cooling. A further advantage of the processor controller is that the processor normally also can handle the temperature control of the other heated zones—inlet, detector, valves, and so on. 

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