Reliable Low Cost Induction Accelerator System for Treatment of Hazardous Wastewater

There is currently an active interest in the development of improved methods to decontaminate and disinfect wastewater. Direct electron beam irradiation is attractive since radical formation and attack on contaminants is energy efficient and relatively nonselective. Efficient decontamination has been demonstrated with an energy investment below 1 MRad. Although various electron accelerators have been applied, large scale implementation has been impeded by capital cost, reliabilty, and scalability. Induction accelerator technology developed at Science Research laboratory (SRL) under BMDO sponsorship will remove these limitations. Further to eliminate wastewater discharge into the environment SRL proposes a novel concept of remediating and subsequently recycling the water. Such a closed cycle system has two advantages (1) a modest reduction of toxic contaminants is required thereby significantly reducing the treatment cost and (2) the elimination of wastewater discharge into the environment. The objective of this effort is to develop a new, low cost and reliable closed cycle process for decontamination of wastewater using linear induction accelerator technology. Electron beams are produced with the SRL accelerator in a compact configuration which employs the reliability of all-solid-state switching to provide high average power through high pulse repetition rate. Preliminary tests at ARL with 500 keV electron energy have shown effective and efficient destruction of organic contaminants in water. Experiments have also been performed under ARPA sponsorship that have verified the remediation of red water which results from the production of TNT for the military. In fact, all TNT manufacturing facilities in the USA have been shut down because of the contaminated red water that is produced. All of these remediation experiments clearly demonstrate the dual use of SRL's electron beam technology. In Phase I we will use the existing SNOMAD-IV induction accelerator at SRL with recent upgrade to 1.5 MeV. This system will be coupled to a flowing contaminated water system to provide a unique facility for the proposed research. Anticipated Benefits: The EPA estimates that US industries generated and treated 35 billi