Gas separation performance of a hollow-filament type polyimide membrane module for a compact tritium removal system

A new tritium removal system using gas separation membranes has been studied to develop more compact and cost-effective system for a fusion reactor. To obtain necessary parameters, which are directly scalable to the ITER Atmospheric Detritiation System, the basic tritium recovery performance was investigated with a scaled polyimide membrane module (hollow-filament type : 10 m3/hr) loop. The result shows that the H2 recovery ratio from N2 or air was more than 99% or about 97%, respectively, at flow rate ratio of permeated/feed = 0.1, feed ampersand permeated side pressures = 2580 ampersand 80 torr, and module temp. = 293 K. Tritium (HT) recovery function was almost the same as H2 recovery, even though the total hydrogen concentration was a few ppm in the feed of module. H2O recovery performance was better than hydrogen recovery. These recovery functions were improved effectively decreasing the pressure ratio of permeated/feed of module. 5 refs., 11 figs