EMSP Final Report: Electrically Driven Technologies for Radioactive Aerosol Abatement

The purpose of this research project was to develop an improved understanding of how electrically driven processes, including electrocoalescence, acoustic agglomeration, and electric filtration, may be employed to efficiently treat problems caused by the formation of aerosols during DOE waste treatment operations. The production of aerosols during treatment and retrieval operations in radioactive waste tanks and during thermal treatment operations such as calcination presents a significant problem of cost, worker exposure, potential for release, and increased waste volume. There was anecdotal evidence in the literature that acoustic agglomeration and electrical coalescence could be used together to change the size distribution of aerosol particles in such a way as to promote easier filtration and less frequent maintenance of filtration systems. As such, those electrically driven technologies could potentially be used as remote technologies for improved treatment; however, existing theoretical models are not suitable for prediction and design. To investigate the physics of such systems, and also to prototype a system for such processes, a collaborative project was undertaken between Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the University of Texas at Austin (UT). ORNL was responsible for the larger-scale prototyping portion of the project, while UT was primarily responsible for the detailed physics in smaller scale unit reactors. It was found that both electrical coalescence and acoustic agglomeration do in fact increase the rate of aggregation of aerosols. Electrical coalescence requires significantly less input power than acoustic agglomeration, but it is much less effective in its ability to aggregate/coalesce aerosols. The larger-scale prototype showed qualitatively similar results as the unit reactor tests, but presented more difficulty in interpretation of the results because of the complex multi-physics coupling that necessarily occur in all larger-scale system tests. An additional finding from this work is that low-amplitude oscillation may provide an alternative, non-invasive, non-contact means of controlling settling and/or suspension of solids. Further investigation would be necessary to evaluate its utility for radioactive waste treatment applications. This project did not uncover a new technology for radioactive waste treatment. While it may be possible that an efficient electrically driven technology for aerosol treatment could be developed, it appears that other technologies, such as steel and ceramic HEPA filters, can suitably solve this problem. If further studies are to be undertaken, additional fundamental experimentation and modeling is necessary to fully capture the physics; in addition, larger-scale tests are needed to demonstrate the treatment of flowing gas streams through the coupling of acoustic agglomeration with electrocoalescence