Carbon-13 enriched trifluoroacetic acid

Hi,

Uranium is enriched as the more volatile UF6. Since 13C chemistry is
so expensive we need to think through our options, carefully. We need
trifluoroacetic acid enriched (at least) at the 2 position. Natural
abundance TFA is cheap in quantity. The formula weight of TFA is 114
so isotopic enrichment of TFA should be a lot easier than isotopic
enrichment of UF6. The use of fractional distillation (or possibly
fractional crystallization) is worth considering. As far as I know the
most number of theoretic plates per unit distance can be achieved
using a high quality vacuum jacketed spin band distillation column
refuxed at equilibrium for a long time. Comments? How could we
estimate the b.p. increase of doubly enriched TFA with F.W. 116? What
would be the required number of theoretical plates necessary to
achieve a given % enrichment over a given period of time. Comments?

Thanks.

dgn
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Paul J. Franklin(moderator - sci.chem.organic.synthesis)
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