Tritiated Waste Management - Tritiated Oil Packaging and Decontamination

Solid phase extraction of tritiated contaminants from tritium-containing waste oils

“…The obtained efficiency was similar to or greater than those previously reported for other adsorption-based procedures. For example, stirring undiluted oil with Florisil sorbent for 24 h allowed the tritium content in the oil to be decreased to 8 % [12]. The application of wide-pore adsorbents, such as silica gel, alumina, and zeolites (NaX, CaX, and NaY), allowed the tritium content in the oils to be reduced to 5 % [16, 21].…”

“…Several techniques for the decontamination of TOW have been reported, including vacuum degassing at room or elevated temperatures [15], air-blowing [16], vacuum distillation [16, 17], acid/base- or Raney-nickel-catalyzed isotopic exchange [17, 18], reaction with metallic sodium [19], direct oxidation of the entire oil [20], and adsorption [12, 16, 21]. Because the contents of both volatile tritiated components and easily exchangeable (labile) tritium in TOW are typically low, the methods based on the removal of these components are rather inefficient.…”

Theoretical investigation of isotope exchange reaction in tritium-contaminated mineral oil in vacuum pump

“…The relative transition state energy of T-H exchange for CH 2 in C 2 H 4 is 102.4 kcal/mol, while those for the different hydrogens in C 3 H 6 are slightly lower at ca. 101 kcal/mol (entries [4][5]. For the hydrocarbon oxides (entries 6-9), the relative transition state energies of oxygen-containing functional groups are ordered as OH (64.5 kcal/mol) < COOH (72.0 kcal/mol) < CHO (103.6 kcal/mol), which are much lower than the relative energies of alkyl groups.…”

“…Tritium contamination of vacuum pump oil can result from an isotope exchange reaction between tritium and organic compounds in the oil [4]. The energy released upon tritium decay could breakdown the oil into smaller fragments, such as methane (CH 4 ), ethylene (C 2 H 4 ), propane (C 3 H 8 ), and propylene (C 3 H 6 ) [5]. Furthermore, the interaction of tritium with the oil can lead to the formation of various organic tritiated species in spent vacuum oils, which are much more toxic than tritium gas.…”