DE102017010585A1 - Tritium / H3 collector with highly effective cooling or cold trap - Google Patents

Abstract

A tritium / H3 collector with highly effective cooling or cold trap is registered, which provides cooled sintered materials as condensing surface.

Description

Tritium / H3 collectors are known and e.g. in nuclear installations often in use. One form of the collectors is that the tritium is stored in molecular sieves. Disadvantage here is the very great effort by heating the Molelularsiebes with hot gas and the subsequent cooling and condensing so that at the end of the process, the tritium is present in aqueous form for further evaluation.

Another form of collecting H3 is realized by condensation in cold traps. Furthermore, it is known that the sample gas is passed through water and then to collect the tritium there. However, this has the considerable disadvantage that the trtium present in traces is greatly diluted, which makes the evaluation more difficult.

Cooling or cold traps are also known and are built and applied in many forms.

A disadvantage of many cold or cold traps is that they require a lot of liquid or gaseous coolant or refrigerant and a high energy consumption. Also known is the use of directly cooled cold traps by means of chillers.

The rather low efficiency of the traps is given by the fact that the gas tritium / water mixture, let's call it Probegas, is passed through pipes cooled by the method described above. Now the proportion of the cooled surface to the content for cooling a gas is low in a tube. Therefore, the residence time of the gas in the tubes must be increased. For this purpose, an extension of the effective distance or a reduction of the pipe cross-section is essential. Of course, a bundle of tubes, each with a small cross-section is conceivable whose surface but also with the coolant must make a close connection. However, the above always leads to the size of the cooling or cold traps requires disadvantageous sizes and increased energy requirements. Furthermore, inexpensive and commercially available Peltier elements are usually provided with a flat, cooled surface design. So they are wg. the small footprint on round tubes operate only with a poor efficiency.

The object of the invention has been found to construct a cooling or cold trap for collecting tritium from sample gas so that the aforementioned disadvantages are avoided. For this purpose, it is preferable to provide as large a space as possible, sufficiently geometrically arbitrarily designed for the task, to be able to provide the sufficiently cooled surface. To realize this, it is provided that the sample gas through at least one cooled element or module ( 3 ) that is made of sintered glass, sintered plastic or ideally made of sintered metal, eg stainless steel.

To that of at least one or more Peltier elements ( 1 ), cooled air, cooling water or other refrigerants, provided cold loss on the sintered element ( 3 ), is as a transfer element a good cold conductive the necessary metallic body or module of any geometric shape ( 2 ), eg made of copper. Depending on the field of application, inter alia, aluminum, stainless steel or other cold conductive materials can be used. The device is then to be provided largely against cold losses with insulation.

It is further provided that the condensed out liquid in a separate, removable container ( 8th ) to collect. In order to exchange or transport open containers ( 8th ) to avoid spillage of the sample, absorbent inserts, such as plastic, paper and the like are used.

The embodiment 1 shows the structure of the essential parts of the cooling or cold trap made of sintered material. The reference number ( 1 ) shows a cooling module, here a Peltier element, the reference numerals ( 2 ) shows a metallic module for the temperature transfer of the Peltier elements ( 1 ) to the sintering module ( 3 ). It should be noted that to the metallic module ( 1 ) the cooling can be done by any other means, such as air, water or liquid oxygen.

The embodiment 2 shows the ready-built cold trap ( 1 ; 2 ; 3 ) with the flow direction of the dried gas ( 9 ) and the flow direction of the condensed water / tritium ( 10 ). The latter collects in the removable container ( 8th ). The connections ( 7 ) serve the supply and exhaust air.

The embodiment 3 shows aids, here Peltier elements ( 1 ), the pre-cooling of the gas before the cold trap ( 3 ) and the cooling of the liquid in the liquid container ( 8th ) serve.

LIST OF REFERENCE NUMBERS

1.

Cooling elements, for example Peltierelmente

Second

Metallic module for cold transfer

Third

Element of sintered metal, glass or plastic

4th

Exhaust air outlet pipe for gas-water-tritium mixture after separation

5th

Insulation

6th

Exhaust pipe for dry gas

7th

Supply pipe for gas-water-tritium mixture before separation

8th.

Removable fluid container

9th

Dried gas or air

10th

Flow direction for separated water or tritium

Claims (4)

Tritium / H3 collector with highly effective cooling or cold trap, characterized in that at least one module (3) any geometric shape in the smallest possible space as large as possible for the task sufficiently cooled surface of sintered glass, sintered plastic or sintered in an ideal manner Metal passes through which the sample gas is passed, where the liquid condenses out, is collected in a separate sealable container (8) and collected. Tritium / H3 collector with highly effective cooling or cold trap after Claim 1 , characterized in that a metallic module for the temperature transfer of the cooling elements, in an ideal manner individually or in stages superimposed Peltier elements (1) to the module (3), can be used. Tritium / H3 collector with highly effective cooling or cold trap after the Claims 1 and 2 , characterized in that to avoid sample losses during the exchange or transport of the open collection container (8), absorbent inserts, for example made of plastic, paper and the like are used. Tritium / H3 collector with highly effective cooling or cold trap after the Claims 1 to 3 , characterized in that the sample gas can be pre-cooled and that the liquid collected in the container (8) can be cooled until icing.

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