(224e) Mechanical Design and Fabrication of a High-Temperature

A sulfuric acid decomposer suitable for use with a high temperature heat source is required by the Sulfur-Iodine project at Sandia National Laboratories. The design requirements for the decomposer are that the decomposer needs to be resistant to corrosion, thermal creep, and provide a contamination-free product stream. The product stream upon output from the decomposer is O2, SO2 and water vapor. The input stream is a sulfuric acid solution exhibiting a broad range of temperatures and concentrations. The idealized decomposer should be readily fabricated from commercial materials, be easy to assemble and disassemble, provide excellent heat transfer and recovery, be easy to load and unload catalyst, and finally be amenable to mass production.

A design was generated that employed materials resistant to corrosion and could be joined together. An overall assembly was designed that allowed ease of assembly/ disassembly. The initial design did not fully address ease of loading catalyst, although a second generation model did address this issue. Two models were fabricated, a 27 inch and a 48 inch decomposer bayonet. At this time, the 27? decomposer bayonet has been tested, and produced excellent results on the first tests. Subsequent tests continued to show satisfactory performance. This paper addresses the mechanical design and integration as well as the installation of the 27? bayonet into a test fixture. A companion paper will discuss the test results.