A water distillation detritiation facility and its performance test

Abstract Water distillation is an effective method for detritiation of drainage from a nuclear power plant, and for the volume reduction of tritiated water from the cooling and safety systems of a nuclear fusion reactor. The height equivalent of theoretical plate (HETP) value is usually required for the conceptual column design to determine the height of the packing layer. A H2O-HTO water distillation engineering detritiation facility is established in Institute of Nuclear Physics and Chemistry, China Academy of Engineering Physics. Distillation in a total reflux mode for H2O-HTO with tritium activity of 13.5 MBq/kg has been performed in the column with 12 m height of packing layer and 261 mm inner diameter to measure the value of HETP for phosphor bronze bilayer gauze corrugated structured packing. When the column is operated at overhead pressure of 7 kPa and reflux rate of 25.0 kg/h, the pressure drop of the total column is just 2.0 kPa. The HETP value of the structured packing is 160 mm.