Hydrothermal processing of Hanford tank wastes: Process modeling and control

摘要

In the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) hydrothermal process, waste streams are first pressurized and heated as they pass through a continuous flow tubular reactor vessel. The waste is maintained at reaction temperature of 300--550 C where organic destruction and sludge reformation occur. This report documents LANL activities in process modeling and control undertaken in FY94 to support hydrothermal process development. Key issues discussed include non-ideal flow patterns (e.g. axial dispersion) and their effect on reactor performance, the use and interpretation of inert tracer experiments, and the use of computational fluid mechanics to evaluate novel hydrothermal reactor designs. In addition, the effects of axial dispersion (and simplifications to rate expressions) on the estimated kinetic parameters are explored by non-linear regression to experimental data. Safety-related calculations are reported which estimate the explosion limits of effluent gases and the fate of hydrogen as it passes through the reactor. Development and numerical solution of a generalized one-dimensional mathematical model is also summarized. The difficulties encountered in using commercially available software to correlate the behavior of high temperature, high pressure aqueous electrolyte mixtures are summarized. Finally, details of the control system and experiments conducted to empirically determine the system response are reported. (ERA citation 19:032481)