Deuterium Extraction from Helium with a Vanadium Vacuum Permeator: Commissioning of the Tritium Extraction eXperiment (TEX)

The Tritium Extraction eXperiment (TEX) is a forced-convection, lead-lithium loop in the Safety and Tritium Applied Research facility at Idaho National Laboratory with the purpose of providing validation data for the vacuum permeator tritium extraction concept. A vanadium tube with a 1000-mm length, 12.7-mm outside diameter, and 0.50-mm wall thickness is installed in the test section of TEX. The impurity concentrations, surface chemistry, and microstructure of the installed vanadium tube are characterized and quantified to elucidate permeation phenomena observed in experimentation. Herein, the permeation performance of the vanadium tube is characterized by measuring deuterium permeation at 300°C, 325°C, and 350°C at 100-kPa, 125-kPa, and 150-kPa total pressures with 5000 ppm deuterium in a helium gas mixture in a once-through flow configuration. The hydrogen isotope permeation through the vanadium tube in the test section is measured with quadrupole mass spectrometers, and the hydrogen isotope concentration in the inlet and outlet gas stream is measured with gas chromatography. The transient permeation results are modeled with MELCOR-TMAP, a thermal-hydraulic tritium transport code. The model results with fit properties compared well with experimental data. The fit properties agree with the experimentally measured values reported in literature.