Investigation of water accumulation in an offgas test facility HEPA housing

The Consolidated Incineration Facility, at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site, is designed to treat solid and liquid RCRA hazardous and mixed wastes generated by site operations and clean-up activities. During CIF's pretrial burn campaigns in 1995, an appreciable amount of water was recovered from the HEPA housings. Questions were immediately raised as to the source of the water, and the degree of wetness of the filters during operation. There are two primary issues involved: Water could reduce the life expectancy and performance of the HEPA filters, housing, and associated ducting, and wet HEPAs also present radiological concerns for personnel during filter change-out. A similar phenomenon was noted at the Offgas Components Test Facility (OCTF), a 1/10 scale pilot of CIF's air pollution control system. Tests at OCTF indicated the water's most likely origin to be vapor condensing out from the flue gas stream due to excessive air in-leakage at housing door seals, ducting flanges, and actual holes in the ducting. The rate of accumulation bears no statistical correlation to such process parameters as steam flow, reheater outlet temperature and offgas velocity in the duct. Test results also indicated that the HEPA filter media is moistened by the initial process flow while the facility is being brought on line. However, even when the HEPA filters were manually drenched prior to startup, they became completely dry within four hours of the time steam was introduced to the reheater. Finally, no demonstrable relationship was found between the degree of filter media wetness and filter dP