Author(s)

D. P. Guillen

Abstract

Legacy tank waste from five decades of plutonium production at the Hanford Site during the Cold War will be vitrified into a stable waste form for disposal. A Waste Treatment Plant, currently under construction, houses Joule-heated ceramic-lined waste glass melters wherein radioactive waste will be combined with glass formers to produce borosilicate glass. Through testing conducted in pilot-scale melters with surrogate waste, as well as operational experience at other sites, it has been demonstrated that the use of bubblers can dramatically improve the glass production rate. In this paper, parameters influencing the formation and rise of a bubble stream in a viscous liquid are investigated. Experimental data and observations from laboratory and pilot-scale testing are integrated with first principles to develop a set of equations that form a mechanistic bubbling model to be incorporated into the melter model.

Keywords

bubbling behavior, waste glass melter, vitrification