METHOD OF DEUTERIUM ISOTOPE SEPARATION USING ETHYLENE AND ETHYLENE DICHLORIDE

摘要

The present invention relates to deuterium isotope separation and enrichment. Presently, multi-stage equilibrium partition methods are employed to concentrate naturally occurring deuterium. Such methods involve bulky equipment and large materials handling problems because of low enrichment factors per stage. Therefore, there is low throughput and long time periods involved in order to attain steady state equilibrium conditions. The present invention overcomes these deficiencies by providing a method of separating deuterium from certain normally commercially available sources such as ethylene, vinyl chloride, 1,2-dichloroethane and propylene using tuned infrared lasers to selectively decompose such compounds into enriched molecular products containing deuterium atoms. The deuterium containing molecules can be easily separated from the starting material by absorption, distillation or other simple chemical separation techniques and methods. After evaporation such deuterium containing molecules can be burned to form water with an enriched deuterium content or pyrolyzed to form hydrogen gas with an enriched deuterium content. The present invention results in obtaining amounts of deuterium or heavy water as a valuable by-product from commercial chemical process.