A Brief Review of Filtration Studies for Waste Treatment at the Hanford Site

This document completes the requirements of Milestone 1-2, PNNL Draft Literature Review, discussed in the scope of work outlined in the EM-31 Support Project task plan WP-2.3.6-2010-1. The focus of task WP 2.3.6 is to improve the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) understanding of filtration operations for high-level waste (HLW) to enhance filtration and cleaning efficiencies, thereby increasing process throughput and reducing the sodium demand (through acid neutralization). Developing the processes for fulfilling the cleaning/backpulsing requirements will result in more efficient operations for both the Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) and the Savannah River Site (SRS), thereby increasing throughput by limiting cleaning cycles. The purpose of this document is to summarize Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s (PNNL’s) literature review of historical filtration testing at the laboratory and of testing found in peer-reviewed journals. Eventually, the contents of this document will be merged with a literature review by SRS to produce a summary report for DOE of the results of previous filtration testing at the laboratories and the types of testing that still need to be completed to address the questions about improved filtration performance at WTP and SRS. To this end, this report presents 1) a review of the current state of crossflow filtration knowledge available in the peer-reviewed literature, 2) a detailed review of PNNL-related filtration studies specific to the Hanford site, and 3) an overview of current waste filtration models developed by PNNL and suggested avenues for future model development.