Modelling tritium adsorption and desorption from tungsten dust particles with a surface kinetic model

Abstract

A kinetic surface model is presented and used to explain the loading and desorption kinetics of tritium retained in micrometre-sized tungsten (W) dust particles. The model describes the sticking of hydrogen isotopes from the gas phase to W surfaces and the desorption from W surfaces. The initial sticking coefficient is set to one and independent of the temperature. The activation energy for desorption depends on the hydrogen coverage of the surface and is parameterised with density functional theory (DFT) calculations for W(100), W(110) and W(111) surfaces. The DFT-parameterised model is successfully compared to experimental results showing that the amount of measured tritium as well as the desorption kinetic can be modelled with only tritium adsorbed on the surface of W dust particles. Then, the model is used to explore possible scenarios to remove the tritium from the W surfaces by exposing the tritiated surfaces to either deuterium and hydrogen. The simulations suggest that it can be possible to remove all the tritium trapped on the W surfaces even at room temperature as soon as the hydrogen or deuterium pressure is higher than the tritium pressure. This gives opportunity to build tritium removal scenarios for ITER.