Simulant Development for Hanford Double-Shell Tank Mixing and Waste Feed Delivery Testing

The U.S. Department of Energy Office of River Projection manages the River Protection Project, which has the mission to retrieve and treat the Hanford tank waste for disposal and close the tank farms (Certa et al. 2011). Washington River Protection Solutions, LLC (WRPS) is responsible for a primary objective of this mission which is to retrieve and transfer tank waste to the Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP). A mixing and sampling program with four separate demonstrations is currently being conducted to support this objective and also to support activities in a plan for addressing safety concerns identified by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board related to the ability of the WTP to mix, sample, and transfer fast settling particles. Previous studies have documented the objectives, criteria, and selection of non-radioactive simulants for these four demonstrations. The identified simulants include Newtonian suspending liquids with densities and viscosities that span the range expected in waste feed tanks. The identified simulants also include non-Newtonian slurries with Bingham yield stress values that span a range that is expected to bound the Bingham yield stress in the feed delivery tanks. The previous studies identified candidate materials for the Newtonian and non-Newtonian suspending fluids,more » but did not provide specific recipes for obtaining the target properties and information was not available to evaluate the compatibility of the fluids and particles or the potential for salt precipitation at lower temperatures. The purpose of this study is to prepare small batches of simulants in advance of the demonstrations to determine specific simulant recipes, to evaluate the compatibility of the liquids and particles, and to determine if the simulants are stable for the potential range of test temperatures. The objective of the testing, which is focused primarily on the Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids, is to determine the composition of simulant materials that give the desired density and viscosity or rheological parameters.« less