Adsorption Isotherms of Hydrogen Isotopes on Molecular Sieves 5A at Low Temperature

Abstract

Cryogenic Molecular Sieve Bed (CMSB) is considered to be applied to the bred tritium recovery system or the helium glow discharge exhaust gas cleanup system of nuclear fusion reactor. Molecular Sieves 5A (MS5A) is one of the most possible candidate adsorbents for CMSB. To design the CMSB, adsorption isotherm of hydrogen isotopes for MS5A must be investigated in liquid nitrogen temperature region (around 77 K) and above, and isotherm equation which can express the experimental data obtained in wide pressure range with good accuracy needs to obtaining. The present authors carried out the experiments using the volumetric method to obtain the adsorption isotherm of H₂ and D₂ for MS5A. Adsorption isotherms were obtained in the pressure range between about lPa and 0.2MPa at 77K (liquid nitrogen), 87K (liquid argon), 113K (isopentane), 143 K (n-pentane), 155 K (ethanol) and 195 K (dry ice/ethanol). Two Sites Langmuir Model was applied to understand adsorption isotherms, and was able to express the experimental observation with fairly good accuracy. The apparent heats of adsorption for two kinds of activated adsorption sites were obtained from temperature dependence of adsorption isotherms. Furthermore, parameters of adsorption isotherms for residual 4 hydrogen isotopes (HD, HT, DT and T2) were estimated using reduced mass.

KEYWORDS:

• fusion reactors
• breeder blankets
• He GDC
• CMSB
• adsorption isotherm
• tritium
• Two Sites Langmuir Model
• Henry's law
• heat of adsorption
• reduced mass