Investigation of hydrodynamic parameters inside a gas centrifuge rotor in the presence of hydrogen fluoride and air light gases using DSMC and Boltzmann distribution function

Abstract

The Boltzmann equation which describes binary collisions between molecules is a very important equation in physics and fluid dynamics. Direct Monte Carlo simulation is one of the methods to solve the Boltzmann equation. The moisture can leak to the fluid pipelines in the various places of cascades so many times through the enrichment operations since the pressure of the most enrichment process units is less than the atmospheric pressure. It causes the solid uranium precipitation on the inner surfaces of rotor and HF production upon the reaction with UF6. In the present work, the effect of concentration and total pressure inside a hypothetical centrifuge for binary component conditions (ZUF6=0.97, ZHF=0.03), (ZUF6=0.93, ZHF=0.07), (ZUF6=0.9, ZHF=0.1), (ZUF6=0.85, ZHF=0.15), and three component conditions (ZUF6=0.9, ZHF=0.05, ZAir=0.05) and (ZUF6=0.8, ZHF=0.1, ZAir=0.1) have been investigated. The results have been compared with those of the Boltzmann distribution function. Moreover, increment in the amount of light gas along with UF6 results in the decrement of ρνz.

Keywords

• boltzmann equation
• hydrogen fluoride
• gas centrifuge
• dsmc