Abstract:
:Thousands of tons of isotopic mixtures are processed annually for heavy-water production and tritium decontamination. The existing technologies remain extremely energy intensive and require large capital investments. New approaches are needed to reduce the industry's footprint. Recently, micrometre-size crystals of graphene are shown to act as efficient sieves for hydrogen isotopes pumped through graphene electrochemically. Here we report a fully-scalable approach, using graphene obtained by chemical vapour deposition, which allows a proton-deuteron separation factor of around 8, despite cracks and imperfections. The energy consumption is projected to be orders of magnitude smaller with respect to existing technologies. A membrane based on 30 m2 of graphene, a readily accessible amount, could provide a heavy-water output comparable to that of modern plants. Even higher efficiency is expected for tritium separation. With no fundamental obstacles for scaling up, the technology's simplicity, efficiency and green credentials call for consideration by the nuclear and related industries.
journal_name
Nat Communjournal_title
Nature communicationsauthors
Lozada-Hidalgo M,Zhang S,Hu S,Esfandiar A,Grigorieva IV,Geim AKdoi
10.1038/ncomms15215subject
Has Abstractpub_date
2017-05-09 00:00:00pages
15215issn
2041-1723pii
ncomms15215journal_volume
8pub_type
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