Investigation of the cut on the separation of xenon stable isotopes in the square cascade

Abstract

One of the important parameters in the square cascade, which has a great influence on its performance in the separation of multicomponent isotopes, is the cascade cut. In this research work, at first, the effect of cascade cut on the separation of xenon middle isotopes in a square cascade with 20 stages was studied. These studies were carried out for two cases in which the separation factor was 1.2 and 1.1. Moreover, the minimum length for creating a long cascade by changing the Z/F value and cascade cut has been determined. Based on the calculations, if the separation factor is 1.2 and 1.1, the minimum number of cascade stages will be 55 and 110, that's not simply possible. The results showed that the appropriate cascade cut in the long cascade is different from the short cascade. Using the parametric studies of the short cascade, it is possible to determine the most appropriate cascade cut in which the desired isotope concentration reaches its maximum. In order to maximize the amount of Xe-129 in a 20 stages cascade, the suitable cut is 0.2 in the separation factor of 1.2 and 0.15 in the separation factor of 1.1.

Keywords

• stable isotopes
• square cascade
• cascade cut
• multicomponent isotope separation
• xenon