Numerical analysis of platinum group particle behavior in vitrification melter

Kawamura, Takumi*; Ito, Kei; Sakai, Takaaki; Nakajima, Masayoshi ; Fujiwara, Koji; Ohshima, Hiroyuki

In a vitrification process of high level radio-active liquid wastes, platinum group particles are mixed into molted glass and convected with the glass flow in vitrification melters. Though behaviors of the particles in the melters should be investigated to establish efficient melter operation, difficulties on observations in the high-radioactive melters have prevented enough investigation. In this paper, we present a numerical analysis method to evaluate the particles behaviors. Since thermal convection of the molten glass, electrical potential and particle distribution are interacting each other, we coupled these physical behaviors to evaluate the melter status with high accuracy. The simulation results for ten batches of operation showed that an effective discharge of the particles can be achieved as well as the mock-up experiments did. These results imply that our numerical method can evaluate transient behaviors of the platinum group particles in vitrification melters.