Design and Fabrication of Test Facilities for the Demonstration of Jet Mixer Performance in the Hanford Double Shell Tanks - 11241

The ability to effectively mix, sample, certify, and deliver consistent batches of High Level Waste (HLW) feed from the Hanford Double Shell Tanks (DST) to the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) presents a significant mission risk with potential to impact mission length and the quantity of HLW glass produced. At the end of 2009 DOE’s Tank Operations Contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), awarded a contract to EnergySolutions to design, fabricate and operate a mixing demonstration platform to generate tank mixing performance data at two different scales. These data are being used to examine the particulate distribution in a tank mixed by rotating jet mixer pumps, and provide scale up information to predict full scale operational performance. This information will then in turn be used to define the position of the tank discharge pump suction such that consistent batch feed delivery to WTP can be achieved. The Small Scale Mixing Demonstration (SSMD) platform consists of 110 cm (43.2)” and 305 cm (120”) diameter clear acrylic test vessels, each equipped with two scaled jet mixer pump assemblies, and all supporting vessels, controls, services, and simulant make up facilities. All tank internals have been modeled including the air lift circulators (ALCs), the steam heating coil, and the radius between the wall and floor. The test vessels are heavily instrumented such that 3dimensional solids distribution can be measured and recorded in real time while mixing is occurring. Instrumentation includes Acoustic Doppler Velocimeters (ADVs) 1 , Electro Resistance Tomography (ERT), Focused Beam Reflectance Measurement (FBRM®) and Coriolis mass flow measurements, and a detailed discussion of the novel application of this instrumentation is presented in a separate paper [10]. The test platform was fabricated in several modular skids, and was installed and began operating in July 2010.