• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.19 no.1
• /
• pp.22-33
• /
• 1987

The confirmed integrity of nuclear fuel cladding materials is an important object during steady state and transient operations at nuclear power plant. In this context, the clad material yielding behavior is especially important because of pellet-clad gap expansion. During the steep power excursion, the in-pile irradiation behavior differences between uranium-dioxide fuel pellet and zircaloy clad induce the contact pressure between them. If this pressure reaches the zircaloy clad yield pressure, the zircaloy clad will be plastically deformed. After the reactor power resumed to normal state, this plastic permanent expansion of clad tube give rise to the pellet-clad gap expansion. In this paper, the simple mandrel expansion test method which utilizes thermal expansion difference between copper mandrel and zircaloy tube was adopted to simulate this phenomenon. That is, copper mandrel which has approximately three times of thermal expansion coefficient of zircaloy-4 (PWR fuel cladding material) were used in this experiment at the temperature range from 400C to 700C. The measured plastic expansion of zircaloy outer radius and derived mathematical relations give the yield pressure, yield stress of zircaloy-4 clad at the various clad wall temperatures, the activation energy of zircaloy tube yielding, and pellet-clad gap expansion. The obtained results are in good agreement with previous experimental results. The mathematical analysis and simple test method prove to be a reliable and simple technique to assess the yielding behavior and gap expansion measurement between zircaloy-4 tube and uranium-dioxide fuel pellet under biaxial stress conditions.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
• /
• v.21 no.4
• /
• pp.88-100
• /
• 2013

This study evaluated the direct and indirect environmental impacts of various unit operations of a industrial waste incineration plant by using the life cycle assessment tool and reviewed the improvement plan. During the incineration process, the direct environmental impact was decreased with decrease in emission of various air pollutants by incorporating an air pollution prevention facilities. However, an increase in indirect environmental impacts was observed as a consequence of resources and energy of consumption at the various operational facilities. Consequently, quantitative direct and indirect impact were 89.1%, 10.9%, respectively. The environmental impact analysis of system revealed the highest impact of incineration followed by the impacts of other unit processes such as semidry reactor, and bag-filter. The various air pollutants and ashes generated during the incineration process caused the most significant environmental impact. Among the various categories of environmental impact, global warming accounted the highest impact(more than 85%) followed by eutrophication, and abiotic depletion. As a result of the avoided impact by the utilization of heat generated during the waste incineration process, using an incineration heat for steam and electricity obtained the impact reduction of 45.5%, 19.8%. So, during siting of new incineration plant, the utilization of steam generated from the waste combustion is highly considered to reduce the environmental impact.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
• /
• v.27 no.7
• /
• pp.719-725
• /
• 2005

Anaerobic fill time and feeding pattern in SBR operation were investigated to find way of minimizing poor nitrogen removal efficiency in BNR process without external carbon addition. The three types of the modified SBR operations that were CO-SBR, IA-SBR, and SF-SBR were tested by lab-scale and pilot-scale SBR processes($2\;m^3/day$). In addition, practical equation for biological nitrogen removal was suggested and the equation considered the effect of ratio of fill volume over whole SBR volume and the ratio of step-feed in SBR. The denitrification efficiency of the SF-SBR was best among the three SBRs and followed by IA-SBR, and CO-SBR. The efficiency was 95%, 61%, and 19%, respectively. Looking at the change of sludge floc density by the length of anaerobic fill time, the density of sludge floc at 1 hour and 2 hours of anaerobic fill time were greater than 3 hours of one. The floc size distributions were $100{\sim}300\;{\mu}m$ and $200{\sim}400\;{\mu}m$ with respect to anaerobic fill time 2 hours and 3 hours, respectively.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
• /
• v.38 no.6
• /
• pp.323-328
• /
• 2016

Pressurized membrane used for side-stream MBR process requires fouling control strategy both for normal and abnormal operation conditions for stable operation of the facilities. In this study, $85m^3/day$ of pilot-scale side-stream MBR process was constructed for the evaluation of fouling mitigation by air bubble injection into the membrane module. In addition, fouling phenomena at abnormal operation conditions of low influent and/or loading rate were also investigated. Injection of air bubble was found to be effective in delaying transmembrane pressure (TMP) increase mainly due to scouring effect on the membrane surface, resulting in expanded filtration cycle at a high flux of $40L/m^2{\cdot}h$ (LMH). At abnormal operation condition, injection of PACl (53 mg/L as Al) into the bioreactor showed 19% reduction of TMP increase. However, inhibition of nitrifying bacteria by continuous PACl injection was observed from batch experiments. In contrast, injection of powdered activated carbon (PAC, 0.6 g/L) was able to maintain the initial TMP of $0.2kg/cm^2$ for 5 days at the abnormal conditions. It may have been caused from the adsorption of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), which was known to be excessively released during growth inhibition condition and act as the major foulants in MBR operations.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
• /
• v.57 no.6
• /
• pp.781-789
• /
• 2019

There are frequent accidents by chemicals during laboratory experiments and pilot plant and reactor operations. It is necessary to find and comprehend relevant information to prevent accidents before starting synthesis experiments. In the process design stage, reaction information is also necessary to prevent runaway reactions. Although there are various sources available for synthesis information, including the Internet, it takes long time to search and is difficult to choose the right path because the substances used in each synthesis method are different. In order to solve these problems, we propose an intelligent synthetic path search system to help researchers shorten the search time for synthetic paths and identify hazardous intermediates that may exist on paths. The system proposed in this study automatically updates the database by collecting information existing on the Internet through Web scraping and crawling using Selenium, a Python package. Based on the depth-first search, the path search performs searches based on the target substance, distinguishes hazardous chemical grades and yields, etc., and suggests all synthetic paths within a defined limit of path steps. For the benefit of each research institution, researchers can register their private data and expand the database according to the format type. The system is being released as open source for free use. The system is expected to find a safer way and help prevent accidents by supporting researchers referring to the suggested paths.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.55 no.10
• /
• pp.3543-3548
• /
• 2023

Shutdown chemistry evolution is performed in nuclear power plants at each refueling outage (RFO) to establish safe conditions to open system and minimize inventory of corrosion products in the reactor coolant system (RCS). After hydrogen peroxide is added to RCS during shutdown chemistry evolution, corrosion products are released and are removed by filters and ion exchange resins in the chemical volume control system (CVCS). Shutdown chemistry evolution including RCS clean-up time to remove released corrosion products impacts the critical path schedule during RFOs. The estimation of clean-up time prior to RFO can provide more reliable actions for RCS clean-up operations and transients to operators during shutdown chemistry. Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) shutdown calculator (SDC) enables to provide clean-up time by Co-58 peak activity through operational data from nuclear power plants (NPPs). In this study, we have investigated the results of EPRI SDC by shutdown chemistry data of Co-58 activity using NPP data from previous cycles and modeled the estimated clean-up time by EPRI SDC using average Co-58 activity of the NPP. We selected two RFO data from the NPP to evaluate EPRI SDC results using the purification time to reach to 1.3 mCi/cc of Co-58 after hydrogen peroxide addition. Comparing two RFO data, the similar purification time between actual and computed data by EPRI SDC, 0.92 and 1.74 h respectively, was observed with the deviation of 3.7-7.2%. As the modeling the estimated clean-up time, we calculated average Co-58 peak concentration for normal cycles after cycle 10 and applied two-sigma (2σ, 95.4%) for predicted Co-58 peak concentration as upper and lower values compared to the average data. For the verification of modeling, shutdown chemistry data for RFO 17 was used. Predicted RCS clean-up time with lower and upper values was between 21.05 and 27.58 h, and clean-up time for RFO 17 was 24.75 h, within the predicted time band. Therefore, our calculated modeling band was validated. This approach can be identified that the advantage of the modeling for clean-up time with SDC is that the primary prediction of shutdown chemistry plans can be performed more reliably during shutdown chemistry. This research can contribute to improving the efficiency and safety of shutdown chemistry evolution in nuclear power plants.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
• /
• v.51 no.4
• /
• pp.337-342
• /
• 2009

The feasibility of reutilization of magnesium ammonium phosphate (MAP) or struvite slurry recovered from the process through microwave irradiation was studied in this experiment. For this purpose, 4 different operations were performed with or without Mg source addition and different levels of MAP recycled in a batch reactor. Dissolution rate of MAP, ${NH_4}^+$ elimination pattern and physicochemical changes of MAP during microwave irradiation were also studied. The result showed that only 33% orthophosphate ($PO_4-P$) and 27% $NH_4-N$ removal occurred without adding any external Mg source (run A), whereas 87% $PO_4-P$ and 40% $NH_4-N$ removed when 1.0 M ratio of $MgCl_2$ (run B) was added based on $PO_4-P$ in influent. Although the addition of 1.0 molar ratio of microwave irradiated MAP (Run C) removed lower $PO_4-P$ and $NH_4-N$ than 1.0 M $MgCl_2$ (run B), $PO_4-P$ removal was double when compared with no Mg addition (run A). Addition of half MAP and half $MgCl_2$ (run D) showed the similar removal efficiency (88% $PO_4-P$ and 35% $NH_4-N$) with sole $MgCl_2$ addition (run B). Based on these results, the reutilization of MAP irradiated by microwave would be a feasible way to enhance the removal efficiencies of N and P, as well as curtail the Mg chemical usage. Track study showed that $NH_4-N$ gradually increased at initial stage of microwave irradiation of MAP, and then started eliminating from liquor as temperature increased over $45^{\circ}C$. Dissolution rate of ${PO_4}^{-3}$ during microwave irradiation was proportional to the initial MAP concentration, having $0.0091x^{0.6373}$ mg/sec. It was found from the scanning electron microscope (SEM) study that physical structure of MAP crystal started breaking down into small cube granules within very short time by electromagnetic vibration force during microwave irradiation and then gradually melted down into solution.