The Generation and Analysis of Tritium-substituted Methane
Abstract
An unavoidable category of molecular species in large-scale tritium applications, such as nuclear fusion, are tritium-substituted hydrocarbons; these form by radiochemical reactions in the presence of (circulating) tritium and carbon (mainly from the steel of vessels and tubing). Tritiumsubstituted methane species, CQ (with Q = H , D , T), are often the precursor for higher-order reaction chains, and thus are of particular interest. Here we describe the controlled production of CQ carried out in the CAPER facility of the Tritium Laboratory Karlsruhe (TLK), exploiting catalytic reactions and species-enrichment via the CAPER-integral permeator. CQ4 was generated in substantial quantity (>1000 cm at ~850 mbar, with CQ - content of up to ~20 %). These samples were analyzed using laser Raman and mass spectrometry, to determine the relative isotopologue composition and to trace the generation of tritiated chain-hydrocarbons.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2304.02495,
title = {The Generation and Analysis of Tritium-substituted Methane},
author = {Deseada Díaz Barrero and Thanh-Long Le and Simon Niemes and Stefan Welte and Magnus Schlösser and Beate Bornschein and Helmut H. Telle},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.02495},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
10 pages, 4 figures. This article has been accepted for publication in Fusion Science and Technology, published by Taylor & Francis