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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Yasunori Iwai, Katsumi Sato, Toshihiko Yamanishi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 66 | Number 1 | July-August 2014 | Pages 214-220
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-725
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We have developed a honeycomb palladium catalyst to be used for the oxidation of tritiated hydrocarbons. Since the suitable loading rate of palladium deposited on the base material is a technical point, honeycomb-shaped palladium catalysts of three different loading rates—2, 5, and 10 g/L—were prepared to investigate the effect of loading rate of palladium on reaction rate in this study. Tritiated methane was selected as the typical hydrocarbon. A 12 m3 tank was prepared to prevent tritiated methane at tracer concentration fed to the catalytic reactor from fluctuating. The overall reaction rate constant for tritiated methane oxidation on the honeycomb palladium catalyst was determined with a flow-through system as a function of space velocity from 1000 to 6300 h−1, methane concentration in carrier from 0.004 to 100 ppm, and temperature of catalyst from 322 to 673 K. The honeycomb palladium catalyst without pretreatment for activation initially lowers the overall reaction rate constant at lower temperatures. However, the constant recovers steeply to the original value during the continuous combustion of tritiated methane. The loading rate of palladium deposited on the base material has little effect on reaction rate for tritiated methane combustion. The overall reaction rate constant is proportional to the space velocity. The overall reaction rate constant is independent on the methane concentration when it is less than 10 ppm.