Q-cascades for obtaining highly concentrated intermediate components of separated mixtures

Abstract

A comparative analysis of a Q-cascade with a monotonic flow profile and a Q-cascade with flow expansion in the enrichment part is performed under the condition of equal total flows in both cascades. The given cascade schemes are proposed in order to obtain highly concentrated intermediate (with respect to their mass number) components in the separation of multicomponent isotope mixtures. It is shown that the cascade with expansion provides a higher concentration of the target component in the additional product than the usual cascade with monotonic flow profile. However, the amount of isotope accumulated product per unit feed mixture mass in the Q-cascade with expansion is much lower than in the usual Q-cascade.