Tritium separation from gaseous <sup>1,2,3</sup>H isotopologue mixtures by selective adsorption on Ag-exchanged zeolite type Y.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 42509245.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-026-75930-9 and PMC identifier 13408095.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Efficient separation of hydrogen isotopologues is crucial for applications such as the recycling of exhaust streams in nuclear fusion reactors. We report on separation of a ternary <sup>1,2,3</sup>H isotope mixture using thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS), achieving an enrichment of 1:41:175 (H<sub>2</sub>:D<sub>2</sub>:T<sub>2</sub>) 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 T<sub>2</sub>. Specifically, the high selectivity for tritium over protium of 244 makes the Ag(I)-exchanged zeolite an excellent candidate for energy-efficient isotope separation at liquid-nitrogen temperature.