Lithium titanate pebbles reprocessing by wet chemistry

Synthesis & fabrication of lithium-titanate pebbles for ITER breeding blanket by solid state reaction & spherodization

“…The probable Li-ceramics are lithium-silicate (Li 2 SiO 3 ), lithium-zirconate (Li 2 ZrO 3 ) and lithium titanate (Li 2 TiO 3 ) [2,3]. It is reported that Li 2 TiO 3 is the most preferred material for TBM [4,5] for its attractive characteristics, such as the high lithium density, high thermal stability, tritium recovery at low temperature, and thermal conductivity [6] compared to lithiumzirconates (Li 2 ZrO 3 ) and lithium-silicate (Li 2 SiO 3 ).…”

“…The density of the fabricated Li 2 TiO 3 pebble by the above process, however, does not exceed the value of 62% of TD (theoretical density) based on the Li 2 TiO 3 single crystal density of 3.43 g/cm 3 . This requires to be overcome as the Lithium density is an important parameter in the economy of fusion reactor.…”

Tritium release kinetics from Li2TiO3 pebbles as prepared by soft-wet-chemistry

“…These properties were met for Li 2 TiO 3 pebbles as prepared by an original route described in Ref. [2] and in this work we report their testing in the EXOTIC-8.9 experiment in which their tritium release rate could be measured 'in-pile' into the He + 0.1% H 2 purge gas (R-gas) during irradiation.…”

Density functional theory calculations of point defects and hydrogen isotopes in Li4SiO4

“…[6][7][8] The lithium based ceramics, such as Li 2 SiO 4 , have been considered as the favorable candidates of tritium breeders in helium cooled solid pebble bed (HCSPB) design. [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] Specially, the lithium orthosilicate (Li 4 SiO 4 ) have the attractive natural characters of high melting temperature, high lithium density, compatibility with the structure materials, tritium release performance and so forth. China and Europe have chosen Li 4 SiO 4 as the first candidate in their tritium breeding test blanket modules (TBMs) designs.…”