Oxal process engineering

The Can-Decon process developed by AECL and London Nuclear and originally applied to the Canadian CANDU reactors (LeSurf, 1977) uses a citric acid -oxalic acid solution. When the decontamination is carried out at temperatures around 90 °C, only a rather poor process efficiency is achieved therefore, in most of the applications temperatures around 120 °C have been used, leading to an overpressure in the systems of about 0.3 MPa, resulting in complications in process engineering. Under such conditions, decontamination factors between 10 and 20 were obtained when the process was applied to US BWR plants. From these applications no adverse effects on the base materials have been reported. In the early 1980 s tests under aggravated conditions yielded stress corrosion phenomena in sensitized steel SS 304 as a result, the importance of the process decreased markedly for a certain time. It has to be pointed out, however, that the conditions... 

---