A Note on the Efficiency of the Thermal Diffusion Process for Separating Isotopes

摘要

The mechanism proposed by Gillespie for the thermal separation of gases is correlated with the attendant conduction of heat; this is done by describing gaseous heat conduction as a heat exchange between two oppositely bombarding Maxwellian groups which differ in temperature at each isothermal surface by a finite &Dgr;T.The resulting formulas enable a computation of &Dgr;Tthe bombardment ``equipartition distance'' and the transport yield. An ideal system of cells each having temperature limits of 300°K and 500°K is found to require a minimum of 880 kw hours of conducted heat per gram C13H4extracted to a concentration of 20 percent.