Investigation of Cut Control Equations in the Gas Centrifuge Cascades

Abstract

Stage cut control and simulation are the most important aspects in the optimum binary mixture or multi-component multiobjective cascades. Numerical investigation revealed that by controlling the cut of a separation cascade, defined as the ratio of the product rate to the feed rate, it is always possible to separate a multi-component mixture into two specified groups of components, a light group, and a heavy group, in just one separation run. In this paper, the equations related to the cut control are introduced and it is proposed that for controlling stage cuts, putting one valve in the product section of each stage is enough. By solving the set of non-linear equations related to the machine behavior, valve, and pressure drop in the pipelines and junctions, the valve setting for each stage can be obtained. In the end, some examples of an optimal cascade are studied and valve setting parameters are obtained.

Keywords

• gas centrifuge
• optimum cascade
• pressure
• cut control