The Laboratory for Laser Energetics’ Hydrogen Isotope Separation System

Abstract

The University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics has commissioned a hydrogen Isotope Separation System (ISS). The ISS uses two columns—palladium on kieselguhr and molecular sieve—that act in a complementary manner to separate the hydrogen species by mass. The 4-sL per day throughput system is compact and has no moving parts. The columns and the attendant gas storage and handling subsystems are housed in a 0.8-m3 glovebox. The glovebox uses a helium cover gas that is continuously processed to extract oxygen and water vapor that permeates through the glovebox gloves and any tritium that is released while attaching or detaching vessels to add feedstock to or drawing product from the system. The isotopic separation process is automated and does not require manual intervention. A total of 315TBq of tritium was extracted from 23.6sL of hydrogen with tritium purities reaching 99.5%. Deuterium was the sole residual component in the processed gas. Raffinate contained 0.2TBq of activity was captured for reprocessing. The total emission from the system to the environment was 0.4GBq over three weeks.