Radioactive Rare Gas Separation Performance of a Two-Unit Series-Type Separation Cell

Abstract

Enhancement of the separation factor in a separation cell has been desired as one means of reducing the cascade scale required for a radioactive rare gas membrane separation. It is already known that the separation factor of the separation cell increases as cut increases. Hence, in a series-type separation cell which consists of two-unit cells, an appropriate selection of cuts for each unit cell can be expected to provide a marked improvement in separation factor under symmetric separation. This paper presents analytical and experimental results for separation characteristics of a series-type separation cell whose separation factors are far from unity. It was found that the series-type separation cell has a larger separation factor than other types of separation cells, such as recycle separation cell and conventional separation cell. The series-type separation cell requires less power consumption and membrane area than the recycle separation cell while it requires more than the conventional separation cell. As both the two-unit series-type separation cell and the conventional separation cell have individual merits and demerits, a comparison is also made between the cascade consisting of series-type separation cells and that of conventional separation cells. The cascade of series-type separation cells requires fewer stages and less power consumption but somewhat more membrane area than that of conventional separation cells. Based on results of this study, the scale of a cascade can be reduced by using series-type separation cell.