• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.30 no.12
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• pp.655-659
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• 2020

Hydrogen isotopes (i.e. deuterium and tritium) are supplied to the tokamak in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) fuel cycle. One important part of the ITER fuel cycle is the recycling of unused fuel back to the tokamak, as almost 99 % of fuel is unburned during fusion reaction. For this, cryogenic distillation has been used in the isotope separation system (ISS) of ITER, but this technique tends to be energy-intensive and to have low selectivity (typically below 1.5 at 24 K). Recently, efficient isotope separation by porous materials has been reported in the so-called quantum sieving process. Hence, in this study, hydrogen isotope adsorption behavior is studied using chemically stable ZIF-11. At low temperature (40 K ~ 70 K), the adsorption increases and the sorption hysteresis becomes stronger as the temperature increases to 70K. Molar ratio of deuterium to hydrogen based on the isotherms shows the highest (max. 14) ratio at 50 K, confirming the possibility of use as a potential isotope separation material.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.295-300
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• 2010

A binary system of 1-propanol and bromochloromethane which exhibits an azeotropic point and a considerable nonideal phase behavior probably due to the large boiling point difference is not amenable in the actual chemical processes such as the distillation tower and absorber. Therefore, experimental data of phase behavior data of this mixture are indispensable in understanding the inherent thermodynamic characteristics for an efficient application of the system in the industrial processes. In this work, the isobaric vapor-liquid equilibrium of a binary mixture consisting of 1-propanol and bromochloromethane was measured by using a recirculating equilibrium cell at various pressures ranging from 30 to 70 kPa. The measured VLE data were correlated in a satisfactory manner by using the UNIQUAC and NRTL models along with the thermodynamic consistency test based on Gibbs/Duhem equation. In addition, the excess molar volume of the mixture was also measured by using a vibrating densitometer and correlated with a Redlich-Kister polynomial.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.68-74
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• 2010

In this study, fluidized-bed pyrolysis has been conducted in order to recover the bitumen contained in the oil sand. Canada Alberta oil sand contains 11.9% of bitumen and the bitumen-derived heavy oil produced in fluidizedbed tends to be upgraded relative to the bitumen. The continuous operation has been performed using $N_2$ as a fluidization gas at 1 atm and $500^{\circ}C$ in a reactor of 170 cm height. The results showed 87.76% of bitumen conversion, where liquid products are 74.45% and gas products are 13.31%. $H_2$, $O_2$, CO, $CO_2$, $CH_4$, and NO and $C_1{\sim}C_4$ hydrocarbons in the gas products were analyzed by on-line gas analyzer and gas chromatography, respectively. The pyrolysis oil was analyzed by using proximate analysis, heavy metal analysis, SIMDIS, asphaltenes, and heating value. By SIMDIS analysis, naphtha was 11.50%, middle distillation was 44.83% and heavy oil was 43.66%. It was obvious that the pyrolysis oil was upgraded compared with bitumens.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.163-171
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• 2022

Many studies on pervaporation (PV) for the separation of dilute alcohols as an alternative to conventional energy-intensive technique of distillation have been conducted earlier. The pervaporation transition behavior of ethanol-water mixtures through the PDMS/PSF membrane is important, in order to understand the mechanism of diffusion process. Therefore, in the present work, transient PV behavior for 50 wt% EtOH/H₂O mixture at 50℃ was investigated by using 1194 cm² PDMS/PSF hollow fiber membrane modules. The overall total flux and the separation factor of all the membrane modules increased initially and then gradually decreased with respect to PV time. The initial increase can be attributed to fact that membrane fibers were dry and it took time to dissolve into the membrane surface, but the subsequent decrease is due to the depletion of ethanol concentration in the feed. Therefore, it was confirmed that the ethanol permeation through a PDMS membrane is governed by the solution-diffusion mechanism.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.330-336
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• 2014

Many industrial processes such as continuous stirred tank reactors(CSTRs), desalination plant, distillation columns, pH neutralization processes and so on exhibit highly nonlinear characteristic and time-varying behavior during operation. The control of such processes has been challenging to control engineers. Hence, a variety of forms of PID controllers and their tuning rules for industrial processes have been developed to guarantee the best performance. In this paper, a scheme that designs the practical PID controller with an anti-windup strategy incorporating with an evolutionary algorithm(EA) is presented for the concentration control of a nonisothermal CSTR. EA is used to tune the parameters of the overall PID control process with anti-windup by minimizing the integral of absolute error(IAE). Simulation works for reference tracking and disturbance rejecting performances and robustness to parameter changes show the feasibility of using the proposed method.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.293-300
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• 2005

Ultrasonic decontamination of the type 304 stainless steel specimen loosely contaminated with $Eu_2O_3$ powders was investigated. Decontamination factors (DFs) by the three kinds of ultrasonic media such as water, pure PFC (Pefluorocarbon, $C_7F_{16}$) and a mixed solution of $99.9\;vol\%\;PFC\;and\;0.1\;vol\%$ anionic surfactant were determined. The determined DF values were 20, 50 and 200, respectively. This significant difference in the decontamination factors for the different decontamination solution was well explained by the surface tension of the media as well as the interaction between the positively charged surface of $Eu_2O_3$ powders and the anionic surfactant. Ultrasonic decontamination behavior of the loosely contaminated metal specimens such as plate, pipe, welding specimen and crevice specimen in the mixed solution of PFC and anionic surfactant was also investigated. The contaminants were completely removed for the tested specimens except for the longest specimen. For 6-cm long pipe specimen, however, $98.5\%$ of the contaminants were removed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
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• 2017.10a
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• pp.73-73
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• 2017

Pyroprocessing at KAERI (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute) consists of pretreatment, electroreduction, electrorefining and electrowinning. SFR (Sodium Fast Reactor) fuel is prepared from the electrowinning process which is composed of LCC (Liquid Cadmium Process) and Cd distillation et al. LCC is an electrochemical process to obtain actinides from spent fuel. In order to recover actinides inert anodes such as carbon material are used, where chlorine gas ($Cl_2$) evolves on the surface of the carbon material. And, stainless steel (SUS) crucible should be installed in large-scale electrowinning system. Therefore, the effect of chlorine on the SUS material needs to be studied. LiCl-KCl-$UCl_3$-$NdCl_3$-$CeCl_3$-$LaCl_3$-$YCl_3$ salt was contained in 2 kinds of electrolytic crucible having an inner diameter of 5cm, made of an insulated alumina and an SUS, respectively. And, three kinds of electrodes such as cathode, anode, reference were used for the electrochemical experiments. Both solid tungsten (W) and LCC were used as cathodes. Cd of 45 g as the cathode material was contained in alumina crucibles for the deposition experiments, where the crucible has an inner diameter of 3 cm. Glassy carbon rod with the diameter of 0.3 cm was employed as an anode, where shroud was not used for the anode. A pyrex tube containing LiCl-KCl-1mol% AgCl and silver (Ag) wire having a diameter of 0.1cm was used as a reference electrode. Electrodeposition experiments were conducted at $500^{\circ}C$ at the current densities of $50{\sim}100mA/cm^2$. In conclusion, Fe ions were produced in the salt during the electrodeposition by the reaction of chlorine evolved from the anode and Fe of the SUS crucible and thereby LCC system using SUS crucible showed very low current efficiencies compared with the system using the insulated alumina crucible. Anode shroud needs to be installed around the glassy carbon not to influence surrounding SUS material.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.47 no.12
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• pp.828-833
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• 2009

As a fundamental study in the development of a distillation process for ferromanganese alloy melts, the evaporation behavior of an electrolytic manganese melt under reduced pressure was investigated. The melt temperature, vacuum degree, surface area of the melt, and reaction time were considered as experimental variables. The amount of vaporized manganese increases linearly as the reaction time increases, and the evaporation of manganese was promoted by increasing the temperature and surface area of the melt. In the pressure range below the equilibrium vapor pressure of manganese, the amount of vaporized manganese per unit surface area of the melt increased sharply with a decrease of the pressure in the reaction chamber. An empirical equation for the evaporation rate of manganese was derived by regression analysis. The evaporation coefficient of manganese was determined to be approximately $3.84{\times}10^{-3}(g{\cdot}K^{1/2})/(Pa{\cdot}cm^2{\cdot}min)$ under the investigated conditions.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.7-17
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• 2014

Molten salt electrorefining process achieves uranium deposits at cathode using an electrochemical processing of spent nuclear fuel. In order to recover pure uranium from cathode deposit containing about 30wt% salt, the adhered salt should be removed by cathode process (CP). The CP has been regarded as one of the bottle-neck of the pyroprocess as the large amount of uranium is treated in this step and the operation parameters are crucial to determine the final purity of the product. Currently, related research activities are mainly based on experiments consequently it is hard to observe processing variables such as temperature, pressure and salt gas behavior during the operation of the cathode process. Hence, in this study operation procedure of cathode process is numerically described by using appropriate mathematical model. The key parameters of this research are the amount of evaporation at the distillation part, diffusion coefficient of gas phase salt in cathode processor and phase change rate at condensation part. Each of these conditions were composed by Hertz-Langmuir equation, Chapman-Enskog theory, and interphase mass flow application in ANSYS-CFX. And physical properties of salt were taken from the data base in HSC Chemistry. In this study, calculation results on the salt gas behavior and optimal operating condition are discussed. The numerical analysis results could be used to closely understand the physical phenomenon during CP and for further scale up to commercial level.