Adsorption Characteristics of Water Vapor on Gear-Pellet and Honeycomb-Pellet Types of Adsorbents Containing A-Type Zeolite

It is necessary to recover or process tritiated species that are extensively coexistent in nuclear fusion installations. A conventional way to recover tritium release to atmosphere is catalytic oxidation of tritiated species and adsorption of tritated water vapor on adsorbents with high surface areas. However, pressure loss would become more serious with increase in the size of adsorbent beds, which could lead to greater power needs for ventilation systems. Therefore, new adsorbents with low pressure loss and high surface areas need to be developed and utilized for such large-scale adsorption systems. Thus, the authors tested new types of adsorbents, which are gear-type and honeycomb-type pellet adsorbents. The experimental results reveal that the gear-type pellet adsorbents have larger adsorption capacity than the honeycomb-type pellet adsorbent. It was also found that the gear-type MS4A adsorbent possesses larger adsorption capacity than other adsorbents tested in this work. Furthermore, it was found that new types of adsorbents are lower pressure than conventional-type of adsorbents. Among the new adsorbents studied in this work, the gear-type MS4A adsorbent appears to be most promising for the application to the adsorption systems in terms of adsorption capacity and adsorption rate.