Abstract
All industrially significant actinides have hazards associated with their storage and handling. All are radioactive and potentially fissile which limits the amount of material that can be processed in a given unit operation to prevent a criticality accident. To protect workers from the radiation and direct exposure to these toxic elements, processing is done in remoteβhandling facilities or within engineered barriers like glove boxes. Such facilities are expensive to build, operate, and maintain. Actinides also have high waste handling, storage and disposal costs due to their radioactivity and toxicity. These processing constraints make actinide processing an excellent candidate for process intensification as they are separated from undesirable fission products or purified to usable product. Using specially designed equipment that enhances the mixing and mass transfer or combining several unit operations in single unit are typical of process intensification. Annular centrifugal contactors are an excellent example of applying TaylorβCouette type flow to mix two immiscible fluids and then separating them centrifugally. Hence, two operations are combined in one unit.
Β© 2003 Society of Chemical Industry