- Automatic operation
- Glove box temperature & pressure control
- Tritium monitoring, entrapment and reuse
- Moisture control
- Custom built stand alone system secondary enclosure cleanup systems
- Can be moved to other gloveboxes
The SEC comprises a stand alone system which can be attached to any glovebox, enabling one unit to service several boxes. The SEC system has two main duties, firstly to assess the conditions of the glovebox atmosphere and secondly to safely clean up or replace it.
The system circulates continuously on bed by-pass mode, and assessment of the inert atmosphere is conducted by measuring the gas stream for tritium, humidity, temperature and pressure. The SEC system will assess whether to purge the box to the atmosphere, replace it with clean inert gas, pass it though a bank of getter beds to remove any contamination, or leave it on bed by-pass mode.
The SEC system may contain a 5A molecular sieve bed to remove moisture, and a nickel bed to crack organics and absorb oxygen. One or more beds will be used for the removal of tritium, these will normally comprise a uranium bed and a ZrFe bed, however two ZrFe beds are a better option for certain circumstances.
The beds are located in a circuit with by-pass lines around them and suitable valving to permit any bed to be included or excluded.
Pneumatic valves are operated automatically through a computer control process. A high integrity diaphragm pump will circulate the atmosphere of the glovebox, which will be monitored for temperature and if necessary, cooled. The atmosphere of the glovebox will also be monitored for humidity, and if high humidity is indicated together with low tritium, the gas will be discharged to stack and replaced with fresh, dry, inert gas. If tritium is also indicated, the gas will be passed through a molecular sieve bed to dry it, removing HTO, and then through a getter bed to remove elemental tritium. Cooling, if required, is normally via chilled water in a tube-in-tube heat exchanger, or with a finned cooling system using an air blower.
Tyne Engineering's specialists are ready to offer a customized solution to your SEC requirements.
