Abstract: Vibration dehydration screen, as an important equipment for solid-liquid separation in the work of retrieving slurry from intermediate and high-level liquid waste storage tanks in China's nuclear industry, is designed to separate solids and liquids in radioactive slurry. A method is proposed to improve the dehydration efficiency of the vibration dehydration screen for radioactive slurry without changing its structure. This is achieved by finding the optimal values for the amplitude, vibration frequency, and vibration direction angle. The method combines orthogonal experimental design and discrete element analysis software to numerically simulate the dehydration process of radioactive slurry on the vibration dehydration screen. After fitting the simulation results with a multivariate nonlinear regression, a genetic annealing algorithm is used to find the vibration parameters corresponding to the highest dehydration efficiency. The research results indicate that, with a screen mesh of 25, an amplitude of 8 mm, a vibration frequency of 30 Hz, and a direction angle of 60°, the optimal dehydration efficiency for the vibration dehydration screen can be achieved. The research conclusions could provide some guidance for the optimal design of the vibration dehydration screen for radioactive slurry.

Key words: vibration dehydration screen, radioactive slurry, discrete element method, dehydration efficiency, optimization algorithm