Baskaran Karthikeyan, Sharpless Laurel, Elliott Casey, Sullivan Sean, Edinger Mackenzie, Riley Brian, Carlson Krista
Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Nevada Reno Reno Nevada 89557 USA
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Richland Washington 99354 USA.
RSC Adv. 2025 Sep 10;15(39):32708-32720. doi: 10.1039/d5ra05518k. eCollection 2025 Sep 5.
The U.S. Department of Energy Hanford Site in Washington State is in the process of commissioning the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant to process a portion of the 54 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste from cold war weapon production. Technologies for the capture of volatile species of concern are still being assessed, and new methods and materials are developed as operational and flowsheet mission risks are identified. One such area still being assessed is the abatement efficacy of the Carbon Adsorber units to retain gaseous mercury and I released during processing. It is challenging to predict the mercury chemistry due to the variability of the feed, and different methods/materials are required for the capture of gaseous Hg and Hg compounds. In this study, the feasibility of using developmental carbon foam (CF) sorbents for the capture of iodine and mercury was assessed using static and dynamic flow testing and compared against a commercially available sorbent, BATII-37. Both CF and CF functionalized with bismuth particles (CF-Bi) chemisorbed iodine, and CF-Bi had similar mercury capture performance to BATII-37 in dynamic flow tests. While species loading concentrations were measurable, limitations in achieving a mass balance prevented a full evaluation of capture efficacy. Nonetheless, the results serve as an important first step in demonstrating the potential for simultaneous iodine and mercury capture.
美国能源部位于华盛顿州的汉福德基地正在调试废物处理与固化工厂，以处理冷战时期武器生产产生的5400万加仑放射性和化学废物中的一部分。针对所关注的挥发性物质的捕集技术仍在评估中，随着运行和流程任务风险的确定，新的方法和材料也在不断开发。仍在评估的一个领域是碳吸附器装置在处理过程中保留气态汞和碘的减排效果。由于进料的变异性，预测汞的化学性质具有挑战性，并且捕获气态汞和汞化合物需要不同的方法/材料。在本研究中，使用静态和动态流动测试评估了使用新型碳泡沫（CF）吸附剂捕获碘和汞的可行性，并与市售吸附剂BATII-37进行了比较。CF和用铋颗粒功能化的CF（CF-Bi）都能化学吸附碘，并且在动态流动测试中CF-Bi的汞捕获性能与BATII-37相似。虽然物种负载浓度是可测量的，但在实现质量平衡方面的限制妨碍了对捕获效果的全面评估。尽管如此，这些结果是证明同时捕获碘和汞潜力的重要第一步。
