Decontamination Using Foams: A Brief Review of 10 Years French Experience

This paper is an overview of fundamental studies and large scale achievements of the foam decontamination technique in the frame of a ten years research program conducted in the CEA. Main aspects of foam feature (hydrodynamic, stability, chemical composition) are developped. Industrial applications gave the opportunity to experiment many ways to use foam: spraying, circulating, static foams. Economical benefits of the technique are qualitatively assessed and future developments are pointed out.© 2003 ASME