Radioactive Rare Gas Separation Performance of a Two-Unit Series-Type Separation Cell

Enhancement of the separation factor in a separation cell has been desired as one means of reducing the cascade scale required for a radioactive rare gas membrane separation. It is already known that the separation factor of the separation cell increases as cut increases. Hence, in a series-type separation cell which consists of two-unit cells, an appropriate selection of cuts for each unit cell can be expected to provide a marked improvement in separation factor under symmetric separation. This paper presents analytical and experimental results for separation characteristics of a series-type separation cell whose separation factors are far from unity. It was found that the series-type separation cell has a larger separation factor than other types of separation cells, such as recycle separation cell and conventional separation cell. The series-type separation cell requires less power consumption and membrane area than the recycle separation cell while it requires more than the conventional separation cel...