PNNL

Abstract

The Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) at Hanford is being designed and built to pre-treat and vitrify the waste in Hanford’s 177 underground waste storage tanks. Numerous process vessels will hold waste at various stages in the WTP. These vessels have pulse jet mixer (PJM) systems. A test program was developed to evaluate the adequacy of mixing system designs in the solids-containing vessels in the WTP. The program focused mainly on non-cohesive solids behavior. Specifically, the program addressed the effectiveness of the mixing systems to suspend settled solids off the vessel bottom, and distribute the solids vertically. Experiments were conducted at three scales using various particulate simulants. A range of solids loadings and operational parameters were evaluated, including jet velocity, pulse volume, and duty cycle. In place of actual PJMs, the tests used direct injection from tubes with suction at the top of the tank fluid. This gave better control over the discharge duration and duty cycle and simplified the facility requirements. The mixing system configurations represented in testing varied from 4 to 12 PJMs with various jet nozzle sizes. In this way the results collected could be applied to the broad range of WTP vessels with varying geometrical configurations and planned operating conditions. Data for “just-suspended velocity”, solids cloud height, and solids concentration vertical profile were collected, analyzed, and correlated. The correlations were successfully benchmarked against previous large-scale test results, then applied to the WTP vessels using reasonable assumptions of anticipated waste properties to evaluate adequacy of the existing mixing system designs.