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MARVEL PDSA approval could serve as blueprint
MARVEL, the Microreactor Applications Research Validation and Evaluation project at Idaho National Laboratory, has had its preliminary documented safety analysis approved by the Department of Energy, marking a milestone in its development and serving as a potential outline for other microreactors in development.
R. R. Paguio, M. Takagi, M. Thi, J. F. Hund, A. Nikroo, S. Paguio, R. Luo, A. L. Greenwood, O. Acenas, S. Chowdhury
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 51 | Number 4 | May 2007 | Pages 682-687
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST51-682
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Previously we have developed a production process for both standard density (100 mg/cc) and high-density (180-200 mg/cc) resorcinol formaldehyde (RF) foam shells with a triple orifice droplet generator. These foam shells are needed for direct drive inertial confinement laser fusion experiments on the OMEGA laser facility at the University of Rochester. Although this process has been developed into production mode, the yield of high density RF (HDRF) and standard density (SDRF) shells with acceptable wall uniformity has been poor. This yield depends on the type of RF shell that is being fabricated. For HDRF this yield is ~5% while for the SDRF shells the yield is ~30%. We have made improvements in the yield of these shells that meet the wall uniformity specification by modifying the composition of the outer oil solution (O2) in the microencapsulation emulsion. This improvement was achieved by a small addition (0.60 wt.%) of a styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS) block copolymer into the outer oil (O2) solution that increased the interfacial tension of the emulsion system as well as the viscosity of the O2 solution. This modification improved the out of round and concentricity of the RF foam shells resulting in an increase in the yield of shells that meet the target wall uniformity specifications.