Equilibrium Modeling for Hydrogen Isotope Separation by Cryogenic Adsorption1

The separation of hydrogen and deuterium by cryogenic adsorption was conducted, using the molecular sieve 5A as adsorbent, helium as the carrier gas in a fixed column. The breakthrough curves of hydrogen, deuterium and the mixture of two components in helium carrier gas were measured, a separation factor, approximately 2, for the hydrogen-deuterium binary mixture was obtained. The equilibrium model was built for simulation of the concentration distribution for single hydrogen, deuterium and their mixture with helium carrier in the fixed column, and the simulation compared well with the experimental results.