ZIRCONIUM PILOT PLANT RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT. Progress Report

A summary of the work which was done on the small pilot plant during the week's operation shows the following: (1) High vaporization rates can be obtained from a vibrating flash plate. (2) Feeding powder to the plate at a constant and controllable rate presented some difficulty. This may be overcome by pumping between Victoprene seals, proper outgassing of the powder, using a smaller diameter screw, and sloping the feed screw upward to avoid translation of the powder by vibration. (3) Deposition rates could not be properly studied because of high noncondensable pressures. There is an indication that too high a flow rate favors the deposition of ZrI/sub 2/ if the filiment temperature is too low. (4) No corrosion of the flash plate was evidenced during the short period the plant was in operation. A thorough study of corrosion must be made, however, since the entire process may depend on the durability of the flash plate. (5) This type of equipment offers a means of rapidly obtaining good data at a low cost on the fundamentals of an iodide-flow process for the production of zirconium metal. (auth