Tritium Separation from Gaseous 1,2,3H Isotopologue Mixtures by Selective Adsorption on Ag-Exchanged Zeolite Type Y
Alexandra Becker, Holger Lippold, Michael Hirscher, Cornelius Fischer
公開日: 2025/10/1
Abstract
Efficient separation of hydrogen isotopologues is crucial for applications such as the recycling of exhaust streams in nuclear fusion reactors. Using thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS), we report, for the first time, on separation experiments of a ternary 1,2,3H isotope mixture, achieving tritium enrichment of 70% from an initially equimolar (1:1:1) gas mixture, based on selective adsorption using an Ag(I)-exchanged zeolite type Y. Further experiments on binary hydrogen isotope mixtures validated numerical predictions of the separation efficiency for T2. Specifically, the high selectivity for tritium over protium of 38.2 makes the Ag(I)-exchanged zeolite an excellent candidate for energy-efficient isotope separation at liquid-nitrogen temperature.