The non-isothermal Bödewadt problem applied to an advanced plasma centrifuge

Abstract

Several valuable isotopes used in medicine, industry, and science cannot be separated by a gas centrifuge with a driven mechanical rotor due to the lack of a suitable working gas that has a sufficiently high vapor pressure at room temperature. Such isotopes are typically produced by more costly separation processes. An advanced plasma centrifuge (PC) has been proposed that can separate specific isotopes at a lower cost. The PC achieves increased separation performance by the excitation of an axial counterflow in the plasma medium. In this work, we consider the non-isothermal Bödewadt problem for the PC with thermally driven axial circulation created by cooling one end of the PC's separation chamber. Due to the imbalance between the centrifugal force and the radial pressure gradient, we show that a secondary flow appears, which is imposed on the medium's rotation motion. The effect is analogous to the classical Bödewadt problem, where a rotational flow decelerates over a fixed surface.