Crystal accumulation in the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant high level waste melter: Summary of 2017 experiments

Crystal Accumulation in the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant High Level Waste Melter: Summary of 2018 and 2019 Experiments

“…More recently, 10 the accumulation and resuspension of particles in the riser was shown to be repeatable over the short term, mainly because the change in thickness of the accumulated layer was negligible in each pouring and idling cycle. A longer term view over multiple experiments showed a gradual increase in thickness of the accumulated layer.…”

“…Changes in thickness of the accumulated particle layers during pouring and idle periods were measured using still images from the video recordings following the methods described in a previous report. 10 A compilation of run parameters and accumulated layer thickness measurements for all of the experiments completed with the system is included for reference as Appendix A. The following sections describe, in chronological order, the details of each set of experiments covered by this report.…”

“…Previous testing demonstrated that lowering the height of the air lance in the riser to a level below that of the baseline design redistributed the particles that had settled at the bottom of the riser, but did not effectively resuspend the particles during a pouring cycle. 10 Additional experiments were run to further observe the effects of changing the height of the air lance in the riser, as this is anticipated to be a modification that could be implemented if needed at WTP. Note that the settled layer from previous experiments was not disturbed prior to the start of the additional experiments (idle time of about 180 days).…”