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Problem
The client’s research facility is located nearly 2 kilometers underground, making it the world’s deepest operational clean room facility. Although the depth provides a nature filtration for many other nuclear particles, it simultaneously poses difficulties for the modular construction of a solvent purification system. Although the unit operations were standard, the module height restriction of 20-25 feet required Koch Modular engineers to create a system that would usually be much taller to fit within a constrained space.
SOLUTION
Koch Modular designed for the purification of the LAB to be performed in three steps: distillation, liquid extraction, and nitrogen stripping. Distillation is used to extract high boiling components, and liquid extraction is used to remove metallic species, including potassium, radium, and thorium. Nitrogen stripping is then used to remove additional trace impurities. These operations produce an ultra-pure LAB solvent that is recycled for the experiment.
Koch Modular provided the complete engineering for this modular system, and prepared piping isometric and electrical drawings for instrumentation.
RESULTS
Koch Modular’s modular solvent purification system allows for the LAB solvent to be continuously recycled in the experiment, ultimately reducing waste generation, operations costs, and the risk for contamination of the clean room facility.
The system is still in use today and has been successfully running with no reported issues since startup.