Legacy radioactive waste stored in tanks at the Hanford Site is scheduled to undergo vitrification in Joule-heated melters. A carefully calibrated computational fluid dynamics model has been developed to characterize fluid flow, chemistry and heat transfer in the melters. Bubbling is replaced by momentum source terms to approximate forced convection circulation patterns and reduce Courant number restrictions on the resolved liquid–air interface. Void zones in the electrical field compensate for the removal of bubbles. The efficiency of the radiation solver is improved by reducing the update frequency of the discrete ordinates and using lower quadrature. A simple polynomial fit captures the waste-to-glass reactions in the cold cap. These simplifications reduce the turnaround time such that it is possible to simulate hundreds of seconds of physical time per day with the calibrated model versus only several seconds of physical time with the original, higher-fidelity model.

计划将储存在汉福德工场储罐中的旧放射性废物在焦耳加热的熔化器中进行玻璃化。已开发出经过仔细校准的计算流体动力学模型，以表征熔炉中的流体流动，化学性质和热传递。用动量源项代替冒泡，以近似逼近对流循环模式并减少已解决的液-气界面对库仑数的限制。电场中的空隙区域可补偿气泡的去除。通过减少离散坐标的更新频率并使用较低的正交度，可以提高辐射求解器的效率。一个简单的多项式拟合可捕获冷盖中玻璃屑的反应。