Recent System Awards

While most of our systems are heavily cloaked under confidentiality, there are some projects that we are able to disclose some of the general details to the public.

An exciting system that we designed and built for Los Alamos National Laboratory, LANL, won both the 2002 White House Closing the Circle Award in the recycling category and also a Department of Energy Pollution Prevention Award. The Closing the Circle Award was presented at the White House.

The purpose of the distillation system provided to LANL is to concentrate nitric acid containing dissolved plutonium and discharge water with no measurable plutonium and almost no nitrates. The recovered nitric acid is reused in the facility. Their nitric acid use was reduced by approximately 80%, and the discharge of nitrates in their waste stream was almost eliminated.

It was necessary to upgrade our QA/QC program and documentation to NQA-1 prior to beginning this project. ASME represents that NQA-1 should the the quality standard which all world class manufacturers should strive to attain.

Process Background

A common chemical process at several high security government nuclear facilities is purifying plutonium by dissolving it in nitric acid. In the past, the dissolved solution was passed through a series of adsorption columns to recover most of the plutonium from solution. Then the liquid waste contaminated with nitrates was piped to radioactive waste treatment where it was concentrated, neutralized, and stabilized for eventual processing and disposal.

Faced with increasing regulations limiting discharges of nitrates, LANL chose to pursue recycling as a method to eliminate almost all nitrates from their waste stream and reduce their overall nitric acid use. The recycling method consists of concentrating the nitric acid by distillation. This system has been in operation since November, 2000.

Our job is to deliver a system that will make you and your company look good by performing beyond your requirements in an economical manner.