Development of the system for tritium removal from the air of working premises

Abstract The paper presents the expediency of developing the system for tritium removal from large air volumes in working rooms. The system is intended both to prevent ejection of air contaminated by tritium in the atmosphere in emergency tritium release from processing equipment of the experimental closed loop modelling the ITER vacuum-fuel system, and to purify air to sanitary standards. Schematic layout and a design of the system elements are presented. Operation principle consists in timely detection of tritium leakage by control pickups, in locking and switching off the ventilation, as well as in air purification using gas purifying facility (AGPF). In the AGPF gaseous tritium oxidizes on alumopalladium catalyst to oxide, and produced ultraheavy water is absorbed by zeolites. The facility is composed of air heater, converter (column with catalyst), water cooler, two parallel adsorbers (columns with zeolite) and gas blower.