Commissioning of water detritiation and cryogenic distillation systems at TLK in view of ITER design

The ITER Isotope Separation System (ISS) and Water Detritiation System (WDS) will be integrated in order to reduce potential chronic tritium releases from the ISS by routing the top (protium) product from the ISS into the Liquid Phase Catalytic Exchange (LPCE) column of WDS. This provides an additional barrier against ISS tritium releases and should mitigate the memory effects due to process parameter fluctuations in the ISS. To support the research activities needed to characterize the performances of various components for WDS and ISS processes in various working conditions and configurations as needed for ITER design, an experimental facility called TRENTA and representative of the ITER WDS and ISS protium separation column has been commissioned at Tritium Laboratory Karlsruhe (TLK). The TRENTA facility consists of Combined Electrolysis Catalytic Exchange (CECE) process, with an LPCE column of 8 m, in combination with a cryogenic distillation (CD) process. The processes description and the status of commissioning of TRENTA facility is presented. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.