The activation skid was designed with Atomic Energy
of Canada Limited to activate titanium storage vessels before their use
in tritium gas handling.
A high-temperature, pre-activation step is necessary to remove surface
impurities (such as oxygen and nitrogen) from titanium metal to allow
tritium to react with titanium metal at room temperature. To
activate the titanium for the titanium-tritium reaction, a tritium storage
vessel is installed in the activation apparatus and evacuated to a
pressure below 1 x 10-4 Pa. The vessel is then heated to
525 șC and maintained there while vacuum pumping. The vacuum
pressure is maintained under this condition for another 1-2 hours for
complete degassing of the titanium.
The skid includes a vacuum system consisting of a high vacuum
turbomolecular pump, two roughing pumps, valves, gauging, electrical tube
furnace, temperature control system and electrical control panel for
operation of furnace, valves, gauges and pumps.
The system operates manually and independently of other
equipment. All necessary instruments, controls and readouts are
contained on one skid. Automatic vacuum isolation valves are
provided to isolate the storage vessel in the event of a power failure.
Helium leak testing ensured that the complete vacuum system was leak
tight to below 10-6 atm·cc/s (mbar·l/s). The total
system was inspected to CSA 22.2 approval and painted to customer
specifications.
