Applicability of fan spray nozzles to stripping insoluble gases from viscous liquids

Fan spray nozzle stripping appears to be a practical technique for separating dilute volatile solutes from nonvolatile solvents. In particular this technique can be used to strip molecular tritium and tritium fluoride at extremely small concentration (in the parts per million range) from molten salts used as blanket materials in a fusion reactor. Under adjusted operating conditions of the fan spray as it leaves the nozzle, a high percentage of the theoretically maximum achievable stripping would take place from the expanding sheet of the fan spray as it leaves the nozzle and before it breaks up. Although the only available experimental data are for aqueous solutions, a new theoretical analysis of the fan spray sheet demonstrates the applicability of this technique to nonaqueous liquids. The equation derived from this analysis relates the theoretically achievable mass transfer efficiency to the properties of the liquid flowing through the fan spray nozzle and to the operating conditions of the nozzle. Any fluid with viscosity higher than or equal to that of water would be expected to follow this equation as long as a fan-shaped sheet is formed under the operating conditions of the nozzle