HWVP NCAW melter feed rheology FY 1993 testing and analyses: Letter report

The Hanford Waste Vitrification Plant (HWVP) program has been established to immobilize selected Hanford nuclear wastes before shipment to a geologic repository. The HWVP program is directed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL) provides waste processing and vitrification technology to assist the design effort. The focus of this letter report is melter feed rheology, Process/Product Development, which is part of the Task in the PNL HWVP Technology Development (PHTD) Project. Specifically, the melter feed must be transported to the liquid fed ceramic melter (LFCM) to ensure HWVP operability and the manufacture of an immobilized waste form. The objective of the PHTD Project slurry flow technology development is to understand and correlate dilute and concentrated waste, formatted waste, waste with recycle addition, and melter feed transport properties. The objectives of the work described in this document were to examine frit effects and several processing conditions on melter feed rheology. The investigated conditions included boiling time, pH, noble metal containing melter feed, solids loading, and aging time. The results of these experiments contribute to the understanding of melter feed rheology. This document is organized in eight sections. This section provides the introductory remarks, followed by Section 2.0 that contains conclusions and recommendations. Section 3.0 reviews the scientific principles, and Section 4.0 details the experimental methods. The results and discussion and the review of related rheology data are in Sections 5.0 and 6.0, respectively. Section 7.0, an analysis of NCAW melter feed rheology data, provides an overall review of melter feed with FY 91 frit. References are included in Section 8.0. This letter report satisfies contractor milestone PHTD C93-03.02E, as described in the FY 1993 Pacific Northwest Hanford Laboratory Waste Plant Technology Development (PHTD) Project Work Plan