Separation of Isotopic Mixtures of Polyatomic Gases by Thermal‐Diffusion Columns: Interpretation of Data on Oxygen

Abstract

The extension of Furry and Jones theory of thermal‐diffusion columns (or more appropriately its generalized version given by Saxena and Raman) to pure polyatomic gases by Youssef and Hanna is used to interpret the experimental results of Narten and Landau on oxygen. It is found that the results obtained on the basis of extended theory are in better agreement with the experimental values by a few percent than the predictions of the simpler theory of Furry and Jones which is applicable only to pure monatomic gases. The disagreement between the theory and experiment is still relatively larger than the difference between the results of simple and extended theories.