Study on oxidation of hydrogen over commercial catalyst for tritium recovery system

Abstract

For the establishment of the D-T fusion reactor technology, recovery of tritium released into the working area of fusion power plants is quite important. When tritium leaks to working areas, the last barrier is the wall of the building. Due to higher diffusion coefficient of tritium, it diffuses through the wall and would be readily liberated to the environment. Thus, the tritium recovery system is indispensable for the D-T fusion reactor. The objective of the present study is to develop the advanced technology of the tritium recovery system.In the near future, deuterium plasma discharge experiments scheduled be conducted with Large Helical Device (LHD) in National Institute for Fusion Science. A small amount of tritium is produced by D-D reaction in LHD. Tritium in plasma exhaust gases and process gas during discharge needs to be recovered, and thus the design and construction of the tritium recovery system used for that purpose is a matter of considerable urgency.The tritium recovery system usually consists of catalysts and adsorbents, which is the most conventional and reliable method for removing tritium that is accidentally released into the working area of these facilities. However, more recent and advanced type of catalysts on the market cannot be directly applied to the design of tritium recovery system, because of paucity of design data for tritium recovery system. In this study, the authors performed oxidation experiments of hydrogen over a catalyst. The experiments were performed by changing various experimental parameters.