Importance of Simultaneous Combustion of Tritium and Hydrocarbons by Detritiation System in a Fire Event at Nuclear Fusion Facility

AbstractA detritiation system (DS) is required to remove tritium from the atmosphere of a nuclear containment in any extraordinary situations. Realization of a DS that does not require heating of a catalyst reactor for tritium oxidation and frequent switching operation of adsorption columns for tritiated vapor collection will greatly contribute to the improvement of fusion safety. Concerning the catalyst reactor, it has been demonstrated that tritium can be oxidized at room temperature without any heating by the developed hydrophobic catalyst. To achieve a high tritium conversion efficiency for detritiation, it has already been revealed that suppression of production of tritiated hydrocarbons by hydrogenation reactions as side reactions of tritium oxidation in a catalyst reactor is the key issue to be solved. We have to pay special attention to ethylene among hydrocarbons because ethylene is easily tritiated by reaction of hydrogenation. In this study, complete combustion of ethylene at room temperature i...