Recycling nuclear fuel: Argonne video shows separation equipment 50 times smaller
Rapidly spinning packed beds could make recovering valuable materials from used nuclear fuel more compact and cheaper. The US lab Argonne explains its PACERS technology in a video.
Photo: John Hill for Argonne National Laboratory / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped and resized)
Video: YouTube · Argonne National Laboratory · youtube.com
Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago is developing compact centrifugal equipment for radiochemical separations together with Case Western Reserve University. The system, called PACERS, uses rapidly spinning packed beds: according to Argonne, the resulting centrifugal forces are hundreds of times greater than gravity and intensify mixing and separation. A new video from the lab explains the principle. The work is funded by ARPA-E, the research agency of the US Department of Energy.
In demonstrations, a PACERS solvent extraction unit achieved more than 50 times smaller equipment volume than conventional mixer-settlers at the same throughput, Argonne says, with mass transfer improvements of tenfold or greater. A related ion exchange system using a standard adsorbent doubled rare earth capture capacity compared with a conventional resin bed.
Smaller equipment would need less radiation shielding, fewer solvents and less adsorbent, which could cut costs and waste, the lab says. Critical materials could also be recovered from coal ash and mining waste. In August, the fusion company SHINE announced it is working with Argonne and Case Western on applications such as separating strontium-90 and americium-241. So far these are demonstrations, not an industrial plant.