摘要
Hydriding-dehydriding process has been widely employed to comminute uranium alloys. Developments have been made to improve this process because it is a cheaper way to obtain powder of uranium alloys compared to the other methods, such as atomization. This work presented an innovative comminution process of U-10Mo alloy in laboratory scale where a Sievert type equipment was utilized and only hydriding cycles were employed without repetition of the dehydriding procedure. Experiments of comminution of the U-10Mo alloy were carried out by employing alloy samples which were submitted to different heat treatment conditions and, subsequently, to different hydriding cycles. The heat treatments considered were hot rolled at 800 ℃, homogenization at 900 ℃ or 1,000 ℃ and aging at 520℃. It was observed that the number of hydriding cycles and heat treatment conditions have influenced the particle size distributions. Samples that were hot-rolled, homogenized at 1,000 ℃ and aged, and comminuted with five cycles of hydriding have produced powders with particle size distribution more uniform with the major quantity of particles in the range from 50μm to 200 μm while the other conditions have obtained a great quantity above 200 μm.
