Measurement and modelling of sludge transport and separation processes

Sellafield Limited is committed to the acceleration of the decommissioning of its highest hazard legacy plants. To do that it is necessary to retrieve and process radioactive waste sludges in a safe and efficient manner. These are extremely complex and variable materials and so it is important to be able to model their behaviour in critical parts of the process, and this project develops a new and much improved way of doing that. All such models require data for their development and validation which has been unavailable. The project also develops a means of gathering the required data in a radioactive environment. The same tool will then allow the process to be monitored to provide assurance that it is operating within its design envelope and also to be optimised to get the best performance from the taxpayer's investment in the treatment processes. We then expect to see applications in other industries such as water treatment and mineral processing.