Modified Freeze-granulation method for fabricating Li2TiO3 ceramic tritium breeding pebbles

•A modified freeze-granulation method with great efficiency is developed for fabricating Li2TiO3 tritium breeding pebbles.•The mechanism of pebbles fabrication with good sphericity is provided in detail.•The relationship between the mechanical performance of pebbles and the sintering condition is carefully discussed. Lithium metatitanate (Li2TiO3) ceramic is an important candidate for tritium breeding material in fusion reactor blanket. Nevertheless, mass production has become an important factor restricting the application of Li2TiO3 pebbles. In this paper, freeze-granulation method is innovatively modified by drying frozen pebbles in acetone. The principle of modified freeze-granulation method is explained in detail. Influence of PVA content, sintering temperature and sintering time on mechanical performance of frozen pebbles dried in acetone are carefully discussed. The modified process could shorten the drying time in 30 min under the premise of good crushing load and thus conducive to improve the efficiency of mass production of tritium breeding ceramic pebbles potentially in the future. Finally, the Li2TiO3 pebbles present good sphericity, high average crushing load (38 N), abundant and uniform pores which are beneficial to tritium release.