1 Water Collection on a Platinum-Coated Molecular Sieve

2 Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen gas that is used regularly in experiments at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE). To prevent emissions to the environment, capture and containment of tritium released from process systems is very important. Air detritiation systems oxidize elemental tritium to form tritiated water (HTO), which is then collected on a molecular sieve drier. Tests were conducted to determine whether or not a platinum-coated molecular sieve (Pt/4A MS) loaded with light water (H2O) could serve as an alternative to the classical ‘burn and dry ’ approach of capturing tritiated water currently employed (1). In these tests, deuterium was used as a surrogate for tritium. Deuterium gas in a helium carrier was converted to heavy water over a hot copper/zinc getter bed (2,3) and flowed over a platinum-coated 4A molecular sieve preloaded with light water. The dependence of the amount of heavy water captured in the molecular sieve on flow rate was measured. 1