Studies on application on airlift in fuel reprocessing engineering

The experiments have been conducted to study the possibility of using airlift for: (1) metering the radioactive fluids by metering the prime air used and (2) transport of these fluids. It is found that airlift can be used for metering directly or a part of a metering system. It can transport radioactive fluids e.g. concentrated plutonium solutions. It can be adopted to transfer completely solutions between tanks at the same level. The problem of entrainment of liquid by air can be sufficiently reduced by introducing suitable de-entrainers. The major advantage is the absence of any moving parts and its wider flow rate ranges. It is, thus, a valuable tool for a fuel reprocessing engineer. (M.G.B.)