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Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has been awarded a program from the Department of Energy to develop a reusable and remotely handled turnkey absorber system to efficiently capture, store, and recover chlorine and metal chlorides produced in the molten chloride reactor fuel cycle.
Molten salt reactors offer lower operating pressure, higher operating temperature, and closed fuel cycle compared to other types of nuclear reactors. Many sorbents have been shown to be viable to capture the chlorine and metal chloride by-products, however, they oftentimes consist of expensive precious metals, demonstrate low performance, and/or is non-reusable (i.e., disposal). In order to reduce waste production, recycling the decomposed products for reusage down-stream is essential. This illustrates the need to develop a regenerative, scrubbing technology that can efficiently capture chlorine and metal chlorides from the nuclear off-gas stream.
PSI’s sorbents will selectively capture and release the high purity chlorine over many cycles. The production of the sorbent materials will create new business opportunities by integrating them into a value-chain of industrial and/or commercial processes that generate chlorine. PSI’s innovation is a Smart Sorbent technology platform with high surface area that is engineered with surface functionalities which enables selective chlorine capture from nuclear waste and regeneration of the sorbent.
PSI’s approach will demonstrate economically viable process to produce high performance, regenerative sorbent material to capture, store, and recycle chlorine and chloride compounds from nuclear reactors. This in turn, will ensure safe and continuous operation of nuclear reactors.
For more information contact:
Dr. Dorin Preda
Area Manager, Materials Technologies
dpreda@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Office: (978) 689-0003
Acknowledgement of Sponsorship: This work is supported under a contract with the Department of Energy. This support does not constitute an express or implied endorsement on the part of the Government.
