Open AccessActive demonstration of the thermal treatment of surrogate sludge and surrogate drums using the GeoMelt™ In Container Vitrification (ICV) melter installed in NNL Central Laboratory
Author(s) -
S. Clarke,
Charlie R. Scales,
N. K. Patel,
Julian Roe,
Anthony Banford
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
iop conference series. materials science and engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1757-899X
pISSN - 1757-8981
DOI - 10.1088/1757-899x/818/1/012004
Subject(s) - vitrification , waste management , environmental science , radioactive waste , container (type theory) , streams , waste stream , cementitious , waste treatment , cement , engineering , materials science , metallurgy , computer science , medicine , mechanical engineering , computer network , andrology
Under the auspices of the THERAMIN project, the GeoMelt™ in-container vitrification (ICV) melter system installed in the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) Central Laboratory at Sellafield, UK, has been used to demonstrate the immobilisation of two surrogate feeds. The streams selected for demonstration were a cementitious stream representative of legacy drums or failing cemented wastes packages and a wet waste stream made up of a surrogate for Magnox storage pond sludge and clinoptilolite, an ion exchange material, as a way of demonstrating co-immobilisation. The distribution of waste species throughout the vitrified block were assessed to determine the efficacy of the mixing during the thermal treatment process. Analysis of samples from the off-gas system was carried out to establish an activity balance across the process. This paper will outline the process set up, provide operational data from the melt concluding with an assessment of the applicability of the trials results to thermal treatment of these and similar waste streams.