Radioactive Confinement Glovebox Transfer Port

Technology Licensing Opportunity - This is not a procurement. 

Radioactive Confinement Glovebox Transfer Port

The Simple Transfer of Small Items into a Glovebox

Opportunity:   Idaho National Laboratory (INL), managed and operated by Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC (BEA), is offering the opportunity to enter into a license and/or collaborative research agreement to commercialize the Radioactive Confinement Glovebox Transfer Port technology.

Background:   INL, and other labs, use confinement gloveboxes to evaluate radioactive samples in advanced microscopes. One of the microscopes at INL has potential failure mechanisms that require the sample to be retrieved using master slave manipulators. In this event, the sample must be transferred back into the confinement box using alternate means. The normal means of transferring items into the glove box requires personnel to be present and the use of transfer sleeves which are cut and tapped. In this case, the sample could result in high radiation doses to the operator. The available master slave manipulators would not be able to reliably perform the transfer using a transfer sleeve without the potential loss of confinement and spread of contamination. A method of transferring items into the confinement glovebox using the master slave manipulators is needed.

Description:    The device allows small objects to be transferred into a glovebox (radiological or otherwise) by hand with a simple device. When one side of the device is open the other is closed, maintaining a confinement boundary between the inside and outside of the glovebox. The device mounts to an ejectable glove port plug and can be changed out with the same tools. The device can be sized up or down as desired within the limits of the glove port. It could include active purging if necessary, by adding an additional port similar to the leak test port for high contamination environments. The device, as designed, has been shown to be leak tight to 1x10-5 CC/sec Helium.

Applications:   This transfer port can be applied to a glove port in any existing confinement glovebox technology.

Advantages:    The biggest advantage to this device is the simplicity compared to other existing methods of transfers into a glovebox. Because of its simplicity, the device can be operated without any special tools. This method is also highly reusable.

Impact:           These types of gloves cost up to $100-200 each, making a simpler, more efficient process a high priority to minimize the number of gloves used. Other systems for placing items inside gloveboxes are expensive and complex. These devices range from $10,000-$15,000 while INL’s device can be fabricated for $2,000.

Development:A full-scale prototype has been created and demonstrated.

IP Status:        US Provisional Patent Application 62/909,887, “Radioactive Confinement Glovebox Transfer Port”

INL is seeking to license the above intellectual property to a company with a demonstrated ability to bring such inventions to the market. Exclusive rights in defined fields of use may be available.

Please visit Technology Deployment’s website at https://inl.gov/inl-initiatives/technology-deployment for more information on working with INL and the industrial partnering and technology transfer process.

Companies interested in learning more about this licensing opportunity should contact Kala Majeti at suryakala.majeti@inl.gov.