Fabrication and performance of fly ash granule filter for trapping gaseous cesium

Although a disk-type fly ash filter has shown a good performance in trapping gaseous cesium, it has difficulty in charging filters into a filter container and discharging waste filters containing radioactive cesium from a container by remote action. To solve the difficulty of the disk-type fly ash filter, five types of granule filters, including a ball type, tube type, and sponge-structure type have been made. Among them, the best filter type was chosen through simple crucible tests. The five types of granule filters packed into containers were loaded into five alumina crucibles of 50 cc. Five grams of CsNO3 was used as a gaseous cesium source. They were then placed in a muffle furnace and heated to 900°C and maintained for 2 hours. After the experiment, the weights of the cesium trapped filters were measured. Among the five types of granule filters, the sponge-structure type granule filter was the best, which has the highest trapping capacity of cesium. Its capacity is 0.42 g-Cs/g-filter. The chosen sponge-structure type granule filters and disk-type filters have been tested using a two-zone tube furnace. Cs volatilization and Cs trapping zones were maintained at 900 and 1000°C, respectively. Sixteen grams of CsNO3 was used as a gaseous cesium source. The cesium trapping profile of the sponge-structure type granule filters was almost similar to that of the disk-type fly ash filters. For both cases, cesium was successfully trapped within the third filter.