Concentration of heavy water.

Abstract

A micro heavy water concentration unit using the G.S. process was constructed to study possible process improvements. The deuterium isotope exchange was performed successfully in this unit. It was found that the use of monoethanolamine (MEA) in conjunction with the G.S. process had little or no effect on the recovery fraction of heavy water from the feed. However, the experiments indicated that the gas rate could be increased to attain a higher production rate, or equivalently, for the same production rate the size of the towers could be slightly reduced. The improvement was found only marginally attractive particularly because one more stage could be needed to recover the MEA which was introduced in the feed water.