DOE OSTI2012
The ability to effectively mix, sample, certify, and deliver consistent batches of High Level Waste (HLW) feed from the Hanford Double Shell Tanks (DST) to the Waste treatment Plant (WTP) has been recognized as a significant mission risk with potential to impact mission length and the quantity of HLW glass produced. At the end of 2009 DOE's Tank Operations Contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), awarded a contract to EnergySolutions to design, fabricate and operate a demonstration platform called the Small Scale Mixing Demonstration (SSMD) to establish pre-transfer sampling capacity, and batch transfer performance data at two different scales. This data will be used to examine the baseline capacity for a tank mixed via rotational jet mixers to transfer consistent or bounding batches, and provide scale up information to predict full scale operational performance. This information will then in turn be used to define the baseline capacity of such a system to transfer and sample batches sent to WTP. The Small Scale Mixing Demonstration (SSMD) platform consists of 43'' and 120'' diameter clear acrylic test vessels, each equipped with two scaled jet mixer pump assemblies, and all supporting vessels, controls, services, and simulant make up facilities. All tank internals have been modeled including the air lift circulators (ALCs), the steam heating coil, and the radius between the wall and floor. The test vessels are set up to simulate the transfer of HLW out of a mixed tank, and collect a pre-transfer sample in a manner similar to the proposed baseline configuration. The collected material is submitted to an NQA-1 laboratory for chemical analysis. Previous work has been done to assess tank mixing performance at both scales. This work involved a combination of unique instruments to understand the three dimensional distribution of solids using a combination of Coriolis meter measurements, in situ chord length distribution measurements, and electro-resistive tomography. This current work utilized the same instruments to monitor simulated waste transfers. This paper will discuss some of the scaling compromises when it came to the scaled sampling system design, handling of large quantities of material for sampling, and present data for the discuss of likely behavior of the full scale DST based on scaling correlations using a scale ratio exponent (SRE) from 0.25 to 0.45 and the behavior observed in the SSMD platform. This does not establish a scaling factor for DST mixing using paired jet mixers but is an attempt to envelope the likely performance ranges in terms of certification sampling bias, certification sample root-mean-square-deviation, and bath to batch relative standard deviation. (authors)
12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗