 | Handling radioactive materials must be done in glove-box. A glove-box is a clear plastic enclosure with rubber gloves attached to the sides so that an operator can handle material inside the glove-box, but air and radioactive dust are not allowed to escape. The air pressure inside the glove-box must be controlled so that it is always less than the ambient atmosphere. A series of risers, ducts, fans and filters connected to the glove-box keeps the pressure inside the glove-box lower than the outside atmosphere so that no dust can escape.
If the airflow velocity up the riser from the glove-box is too high, radioactive dust is carried into the exhaust system, and these particles are trapped by a series of special filters. When a filter needs to be changed, it is very expensive to dispose of the dirty filter because it is charged with radioactive dust and dirt.
The key to reducing filter disposal costs is to limit the exhaust airflow velocity so that dust is not carried out of the glove-box and into the filters, while at the same time insuring that the pressure inside the glove-box is always less than the ambient atmosphere. |
 | Measurement of the air velocity in the glove-box risers is accomplished with a pitot tube and a sensitive differential pressure transducer. As air velocity increases, the differential pressure across the pitot tube increases. The very low velocity needed to exhaust air from the glove-box, without raising dust, translates into a very low pressure drop across the pitot tube. This pressure drop is as little as 0.02 In H2O under normal operating conditions. A very sensitive differential pressure sensor, combined with a high level DC signal output, is needed to provide air velocity to the system controller. |