Control strategies for laser separation of carbon isotopes

Abstract

Laser isotope separation (LIS) by infrared laser chemistry of polyatomic molecules has come a long way since its discovery. The last decade has seen considerable efforts in scaling up of the process for light elements like carbon, oxygen and silicon. These efforts aim at ways to improve both the enrichment factor and the throughput. The achievement is quite significant especially for carbon isotope separation wherein macroscopic operating scales have been realized. We report our studies on the IR laser chemistry of two promising systems, viz. neat CF 2 HCl and CF 3 Br/Cl 2 . We have investigated conditions for optimizing the dissociation yield and selectivity using natural samples containing 1⋅1% C-13. We also highlight our current efforts for scaling up the process. These include the design aspects of a photochemical reactor with multipass refocusing Herriott optics for efficient photon utilization, development of a cryogenic distillation set up and a preparative gas chromatograph for large scale separation/collection of the isotopically enriched photoproduct in the post-irradiation stage.

Systematic Modeling of the (13C) Isotope Cryogenic Distillation Process

“…being mostly used as a valuable tracer for medical diagnostic investigation of various body organs (1). On the other hand, the ( 12 C) is used in the electronic technology to produce synthetic diamond crystals with 50% better thermal conductivity than that of the ''usual'' synthetic crystals (2,3). The broad range of applications of the enriched carbon stable isotopes justifies the necessity of separating the two stable isotopes.…”

“…Various separation methods exist today (4), however, a convenient technological solution suitable for both laboratory experiments and industrial scale production is based on the cryogenic distillation (2,3,5,6) of the pure carbon monoxide in separation packed columns. Such a pilot plant has been built at the National Institute for Research and Development of Isotopic and Molecular Technologies Cluj-Napoca (NIRDIMT).…”