Oxidation of tritium by hopcalite bed

Oxidation by the catalyst bed with a metal oxide and subsequent adsorption to the porous dehydrative reagents is supposed to be effective process for scavenging tritium from an inert atmosphere. Use of spongy copper oxide or wires of copper oxide is not recommended to use as the metal oxide catalyst from the view point of mass transfer because of sintering and of limited effective surface area. Use of hopcalites and copper oxide-kieselguhr are examined in this study and it is concluded that hopcalites are more suitable as the metal oxide catalyst because they not only remain the oxidation power on hydrogen isotopes even at an ambient temperature, but also show a negligible drop in oxidation performances with repeated regeneration. The effective temperature is about 400℃ for hopcalites and 300∼600℃ for copper oxide-kieselguhr to use as the oxidation bed of tritium. (author)