Safety operation of chromatography column system with discharging hydrogen radiolytically generated

Abstract

In the extraction chromatography system, accumulation of hydrogen gas in the chromatography column is suspected to lead to fire or explosion. In order to prevent the hazardous accidents, it is necessary to evaluate behaviors of gas radiolytically generated inside the column. In this study, behaviors of gas inside the extraction chromatography column were investigated through experiments and Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation. N2 gas once accumulated as bubbles in the packed bed was hardly discharged by the flow of mobile phase. However, the CFD simulation and X-ray imaging on γ-ray irradiated column revealed that during operation the hydrogen gas generated in the column was dissolved into the mobile phase without accumulation and discharged.