The coprecipitation is a robust and inexpensive process for the treatment of important volumes of low and intermediate radioactive level liquid wastes. Its major inconvenient is the huge volume of sludge generated. The purpose of this work is to optimize the industrial coprecipitation continuous process by achieving the following objectives:
- maximize the decontamination efficiency;
- minimize the volume of sludge generated by the process;
- reduce the treatment cost decreasing the installation volume.
An innovative reactor with an infinite recycling ratio was therefore designed. It is a multifunctional reactor composed of two zones: a perfectly mixed precipitation zone and a classifier to perform liquid-solid separation.
The experiments are focused on the coprecipitation of strontium by barium sulphate. The effluent containing sulphate ions and the barium nitrate solution are injected in the reaction zone where strontium and barium coprecipitate as sulphates. The produced solid phase is returned into the reaction zone by the classifier and goes out slowly from the reactor bottom with a residence time much higher than the liquid phase. This creates both a high concentration of solid phase in the reaction zone and a high efficiency of decontamination. The experimental conditions simulate the industrial effluents. The total treatment flow rate is 17 L/h, with an effluent flow rate of 16 L/h and a reactive flow rate of 1 L/h, hence a mean residence time of 10 minutes. In these experimental conditions, the molar ratio sulphate/barium after mixing corresponds to 4.9. These conditions are used in the reprocessing plant of La Hague.
The decontamination factor reached in these experimental conditions is excellent: DF = 1500. The decontamination factor obtained with the classical continuous process is only equal to 60. Different process parameters are studied in order to optimize the reactor/classifier: residence time, barium nitrate flow rate and racking flow rate. The decrease of barium nitrate flow rate reduces the volume of sludge generated by the process keeping a high efficiency of strontium decontamination: DF = 400. An excess of sulphate is necessary to perform an efficient decontamination, but the molar ratio sulphate/barium can be reduced to 3 instead of 4.9 used industrially.
The reactor/classifier also represents an efficient device for the coprecipitation process intensification. Indeed, it can sensibly reduce the final installation size while treating important volume of effluents. This innovative reactor optimizes both the decontamination efficiency of radioactive liquid wastes and the reduction of sludge volume. A reduction of sulphate ions in the discharge is also possible, which is environmentally friendly.
