HDT mixtures treatment strategies by gas chromatography

Gas phase chromatographic processes are of interest for the separation of hydrogen isotopes from an HDT mixture. For a certain quantity, they are very competitive and present several benefits. Nevertheless no active packing material allows to have simultaneously good enrichment performances for tritium production and high decontamination capabilities for HD gases. The influence of the packing material is first described in this article. Then two specific processes (TCAP and Reverse Chromatography), each well adapted to perform one target, are presented. Finally, the problematic to propose an optimized treatment scheme associating these two processes is formulated. (authors)