The experiments performed for this thesis were designed to define the primary
process variables of time, temperature, and atmosphere for an engineering system that
will produce metal powder from recycled nuclear fuel cladding. The proposed system
will hydride and mill Zircaloy cladding tubes to produce fine hydride powder and then
dehydride the powder to produce metal; this thesis is focused on the hydride formation
reaction. These experiments were performed by hydriding nuclear grade Zircaloy-4
tubes under flowing argon-5% hydrogen for various times and temperatures. The result
of these experiments is a correlation which relates the rate of zirconium hydride
formation to the process temperature. This correlation may now be used to design a
method to efficiently produce zirconium hydride powder.
It was observed that it is much more effective to hydride the Zircaloy-4 tubes at
temperatures below the a-B-d eutectoid temperature of 540°C. These samples tended to
readily disassemble during the hydride formation reaction and were easily ground to
powder. Hydrogen pickup was faster above this temperature but the samples were
generally tougher and it was difficult to pulverize them into powder.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2788 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Parkison, Adam Joseph |
| Contributors | McDeavitt, Sean M. |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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