Maintaining the Quality of Lead Containing Coolant in Advanced Technologies Recycling Organic and Inorganic Waste

Abstract

The unique properties of heavy liquid metal coolants (low chemical activity when interacting with air, organic compounds, water and water vapor, high boiling point, low vapor pressure) allow them to be used both in the first circuits of fast neutron reactor plants and in heat exchangers used for processing various organic and inorganic raw materials. Such devices can be either recuperative or mixing type. The latter additionally have the following advantages: lower cost and simplicity of construction; no heat transfer surfaces that can be subject to corrosion and contamination; reduced dimensions due to a larger specific heat transfer surface. The greatest degree of study relates to liquid metal pyrolysis of solid substances, direct contact distillation of aqueous solutions without preliminary preparation, improving the efficiency of continuous casting machines due to the replacement of water with lead-bismuth eutectic. The results of research in support of the above processes are presented. The methods of maintaining the quality of lead-containing heat carriers do not have fundamental differences for the conditions of reactor installations and in relation to promising technologies for processing organic and inorganic raw materials. At the same time, the requirements for devices for implementing these methods in promising technologies for processing various raw materials are significantly lower: in general, a sensor for measuring the thermodynamic activity of oxygen and a device for entering gas (hydrogen-containing or oxygen-containing) mixtures in the coolants.