Modeling of tritium behavior in ceramic breeder materials

The model described in this paper considers diffusion and desorption as the rate-controlling mechanisms for tritium release from a ceramic breeder material. This model was used to predict the tritium release from samples of Li2SiO3 and LiAlO2, given the temperature history of the samples. The diffusion-desorption model did a better job of predicting the tritium release for these samples under pure helium purge gas than did a pure diffusion model using the best values for the diffusivity of these materials available. The activation energies of desorption found from the best fit of the predicted tritium release to the observed release were 105-108 kJ/mol for Li2SiO3 and 85.7 kJ/mol for LiAlO2. These values are in fair agreement with activation energies reported in the literature. 13 refs., 6 figs