Design and Operational Experience with a Portable Tritium Cleanup System

We built a portable tritium cleanup system to scavenge tritium from contaminated gases in any tritium-containing system in the LLNL Tritium Facility. The cleanup system uses standard catalytic oxidation of tritium to water followed by water removal with a molecular sieve dryer. The cleanup unit, complete with instrumentation, is contained in a portable cart that is rolled into place and connected to the apparatus to be cleaned. The cleanup system is effective, low-tech, simple, and reliable. The nominal flow rate of the system is 30 liters/minute, and the decontamination factor is >1000. In this paper we will show design information on our portable cleanup system, and will discuss our operational experience with it over the past several years.