水精馏技术在氚化水分离中的应用进展

Progress in the application of water distillation for tritiated water separation

随着核能与核技术的发展,核电站等场所在运行、退役、事故过程中会产生大量含氚废水,若其排放到环境中将对生物体造成潜在危害。目前,工业上常用的氢同位素分离技术(如低温精馏法和催化交换法等)存在能耗高、装置复杂或氢气爆炸危险等诸多缺点,不适用于核电站大通量低活度氚化水的分离。相较之下,水精馏作为一种传统的技术,具有操作简单、不含腐蚀性和有毒物质、无氢气爆炸风险等独特优势,但其分离系数小、效率低的问题一直存在。然而,通过改进水精馏过程中的操作参数(如温度、精馏塔内径、填料尺寸等)可以有效提高其分离效果,从而适应工业化氚化水的分离。本文详细介绍了水精馏法的基本原理及特点,并重点阐述了不同操作参数对分离效果的影响。结果表明:优化这些参数可以显著提高其分离效率,如减小填料材料的尺寸或对填料进行改性。因此,水精馏可以是一种有效的低活度氚化水分离方法,有望扩大化应用于工业用途。

Large volumes of water containing tritium are generated during the operation,decommissioning,and incident-management of nuclear installations and related facilities,and are expected to increase with the ongoing expansion of nuclear power generation.If released into the environment,this water could pose a substantial environmental threat to living organisms.However,conventional isotope separation techniques,such as cryogenic distillation and catalytic exchange,are inadequate for efficiently isolating significant quantities of low-level tritiated water because of the complex machinery and excessive energy required,and the potential for hydrogen-gas detonation.In contrast,water distillation(WD),as a traditional technology,has the unique advantages of simple operation,no corrosive and toxic substances,and no hydrogen explosion risk,but problems of small separation coefficient and low efficiency always exist in this technique.However,the separation effect of WD can be effectively improved by improving the process variables in the process of WD,such as temperature,distillation column diameter,and packing dimensions,so as to adapt WD to the separation of industrial tritiated water.This study provides a thorough exposition of the basic principles and distinctive features of water distillation and examines the effect of various operational parameters on separation efficiency to adapt the process for the industrial separation of tritiated water.The impact of various process variables on the separation efficiency of tritiated water via distillation was investigated,and results show that optimizing these variables can markedly improve the separation efficiency of water distillation.In particular,decreasing the dimensions of the packing material or altering its properties can lead to higher separation factors and lower residual tritiated water concentration.These findings suggest that water distillation can be used for the separation of tritiated water.By optimizing its operational parameters,water distillation can become a viable method for the industrial separation of tritiated water and is expected to play a significant role in this field in the future.