Hydraulic performance of a single stage 125 mm centrifugal extractor. Contributed Paper ED-01

Centrifugal extractor is the best choice for the extraction operation in fast reactor nuclear fuel reprocessing as it has less residence time and high contactor effectiveness compared to other extractors. Based on the criticality consideration, the diameter of the rotor is limited to critically safe diameter. Due to less rotor diameter, the throughput is less and hence not suitable where higher throughput is required. For industrial scale recovery of uranium from the phosphoric acid, where large quantity of liquid has to be handled, IGCAR has developed annular centrifugal contactors up to 1000 mm bowl diameter. In the present work, experimental studies for evaluating the hydraulic performance was carried out for a single stage annular centrifugal contactor of 125 mm rotor diameter. Experiments were conducted for various process parameters viz., A/O ratio, bottom vane height, and speed for an annular gap of 12 mm. Maximum throughput was established with entrainment less than 1% of one phase in the other in all the cases. (author)