Performance of steam reforming technology in a long term treatment of waste TBP/dodecane

Nakagawa, Akinori ; Sone, Tomoyuki ; Sasaki, Toshiki ; Nakazawa, Osamu ; Tashiro, Kiyoshi

A long term pilot scale experiment with steam reforming treatment technology was conducted for volume and weight reduction of uranium contaminated waste tri-n-butyl phosphate/n-dodecane solvent (TBP/dodecane) which was difficult to incinerate. The technology consists of a steam reforming process and a submerged combustion process. In the first process, TBP/dodecane is vaporized and pyrolyzed with superheated steam in a reducing atmosphere. In the second process, the decomposition gases are completely burned in a submerged combustion reactor. A short term treatment test was carried out before the long term test. The test achieved high mass reduction rate of the waste TBP/dodecane at least 99.3% though severe corrosion of the gasification chamber were observed. This problem was solved by sacrificial anode. After the improvement, the system could be operated safely for 960 hours, the averaged mass reduction rate was 99.6% that was slight higher than the short test one.