Glass Crusher and Tritium Removal System

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Tyne Engineering's Glass Crusher and Tritium Removal System is ideal for tritium lights facilities or tritium laboratories wishing to remove tritium from glass tubes or small metal or ceramic components.

• Crushes glass bulbs from tritium light industry to expose internal surface and remove tritium from glass
• Removes tritium from the waste glass or from small metal specimens
• Places the tritium safely on getter beds for future use or permanent storage
• Reduces radioactive material storage costs
• Serves other important uses for the tritium laboratory

The equipment comprises two separate units: a glass crusher for tritium light tubes and a tritium removal system that can be used with the tritium glass crusher, but which may also be used with the small furnace supplied on top of the equipment.

The glass crusher is a stainless steel vessel, which can be fully evacuated. It contains a carousel for loading tritium light bulbs for tritium removal.  The glass tubes, which can vary from 1" to 6", are crushed by turning a handle.

There are two modes of operation: removal of tritium from glass by crushing, and removal of tritium from miscellaneous tritiated specimens.

If the glass crusher mode is used, it is assumed that the outside of the glass tubes are clean. The inside of the crusher vessel containing the tubes therefore may be evacuated directly to stack before the tubes are crushed. To remove the tritium from the glass after crushing, the vessel is flushed with helium that is subsequently circulated through a cooler, a cryotrap, and then through a uranium bed to capture the tritium.

If the high temperature furnace mode is used to remove tritium from specimens, the furnace is evacuated after the specimens are installed but before heating. Because the specimens may contain some free HTO, the exhaust will be passed through a molecular sieve bed to capture tritium before release to stack via the getter bed.

The furnace is then heated, helium continues to be circulated through it, the gas is cooled, passed through a molecular sieve bed and to a uranium bed for final storage. Provision can be made to transfer tritium from the uranium to a permanent storage bed if required.

The furnace heats the specimen crucible at temperatures up to 750 °C. The vacuum pumping system comprises a Varian SD40 vacuum pump, and a MB 158 helium circulating pump which is able to operate in a vacuum.

The equipment can be made to operate automatically, but in most cases a manual switching system is suitable. This incorporates pneumatically operated valves, manually switched via solenoids mounted on a panel. This arrangement keeps the assembly compact, reliable and easy to operate via a mimic diagram mounted on the front of the cabinet. The use of pneumatic valves enables the design to utilize shorter tubing runs and results in lower inventory.