Semi-Technical Cryogenic Molecular Sieve Bed for the Tritium Extraction System of the Test Blanket Module for ITER

The tritium extraction from the ITER Helium Cooled Pebble Bed (HCPB) Test Blanket Module purge gas is proposed to be performed in a two steps process: trapping water in a cryogenic Cold Trap, and adsorption of hydrogen isotopes (H₂, HT, T₂) as well as impurities (N₂, O₂) in a Cryogenic Molecular Sieve Bed (CMSB) at 77K. A CMSB in a semi-technical scale (one-sixth of the flow rate of the ITER-HCPB) was design and constructed at the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. The full capacity of CMSB filled with 20 kg of MS-5A was calculated based on adsorption isotherm data to be 9.4 mol of H₂ at partial pressure 120 Pa. The breakthrough tests at flow rates up to 2 Nm³h^-1 of He with 110 Pa of H₂ conformed with good agreement the adsorption capacity of the CMSB. The mass-transfer zone was found to be relatively narrow (12.5 % of the MS Bed height) allowing to scale up the CMSB to ITER flow rates.