CANDU Technology Development

Canada has a strong interest in developing new technologies for power and hydrogen production to support its clean energy and climate change agenda priorities.  Super-critical Water Research Laboratory at Trent University conducts basic and applied research in water chemistry and materials for the Canadian Super-critical Water-cooled Reactor (CANDU-SCWR) program, a collaborative effort to develop and deploy the nation's next generation of nuclear power plants.

Super-critical Water Test Facility

Super-critical Water Test Facility (SCW-TF) provides laboratory equipment for studying aqueous chemistry, flow hydrodynamics and corrosion at ambient and high temperature and pressure conditions. The SCW-TF houses 2 modular flow-through chemical reactors equipped with on-line process monitoring tools. It also offers a complete range of analytical services (UV-VIS spectroscopy, conductivity, voltammetry, dissolved gas analysis, GC-MS, etc.). With its main objective to identify water chemistry specifications that will minimize corrosion rates and corrosion product deposition on in-core and out-of-core components of the CANDU-SCWR, the research at the facility involves:

• Corrosion resistance testing of reactor materials
• Chemical analysis (dissolved metals)
• Testing of oxygen scavengers
• Investigation of hydrogen production from Super-critical water

This work receives federal funding through the NSERC-AECL-NRCan Generation IV Energy Technologies Program.

The Super-critical water oxidation (SCWO) process has been under investigation in our laboratory as an environment-friendly (“green”) alternative to incineration and wet-air oxidation for the destruction of hazardous organic compounds. In Super-critical water, organic compounds react completely with oxidant in a single homogeneous phase forming carbon dioxide and water. Organically bonded Cl is transformed into mineral acid, HCl. NOx and dioxins, well known environmental hazards, are not formed during this process. Our experimental set-up allows for the direct injection of hydrogen peroxide into the reactor’s feed line which can give maximum efficiency for the SCWO treatment.

Photos: Super-critical Water Test Facility: flow systems for high temperature research:

High-performance Computing

As a member of SharcNet, the Super-critical Water Research Laboratory at Trent University offers the expertise and research capabilities necessary to perform the state-of-the-art Molecular Dynamics simulations of water and aqueous systems. SharcNet is a consortium of Canadian academic institutions who share a network of high performance computers. Across the consortium, there are over 10,000 processors and nearly 500 Terabytes of storage available in a variety of computational equipment. Laboratory’s own parallel machine is an Opteron-based LINUX ChemCluster. Key areas of interest include:

• Fluid structure and dynamics
• Thermophysical properties
• Nanoparticle formation in high temperature water and steam

Figure: Simulation snapshot of NaCl nanocluster formed in Super-critical water (from Nahtigal, Zasetsky and Svishchev, J. Phys. Chem. B, 112, 7537 (2008))