Recent Advances in the Development and Application of Annular Centrifugal Contactors in the Nuclear Industry

Annular centrifugal contactors (ACCs) use centrifugal force to separate the dispersion of two immiscible liquids with different densities. Compared with mixer-settlers and pulsed columns, ACCs have a smaller liquid hold-up volume and shorter liquid residence time, thus decreasing the degradation of the solvent. Their more compact design reduces physical space requirements and improves criticality safety. ACCs are destined to play a more important role in future advanced nuclear processing schemes. Most of the countries working in the area of spent nuclear fuel reprocessing have ACC development programs. A number of design improvements have been made to meet requirements of the nuclear industry since ACCs were developed at the Argonne National Laboratory in the late 1960s. ACCs have been used successfully in reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel and partitioning of high level liquid waste on the laboratory scale and/or engineering scale. This work reviews recent advances in the development and application of ACCs in the nuclear industry.