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Isotopic bullion

deltaH - 9-10-2013 at 14:57

It's no secret that I'm from South Africa, a country that mines and produces a lot of gold. I am not a particular fan of the gold mining industry, it's very environmentally destructive and that for a comparatively small amount of metal that is pretty useless except as a monetary 'value' metal.

So I started thinking of how we can make much more common metals more valuable--much more valuable, so that they can be used for bullion, but without nearly as much damage as what the gold sector does.

Now take either copper or silver metal, both of which conveniently have only two stable naturally occurring isotopes and that are also reasonably distributed, i.e. for silver it is nearly a 50:50 spread and for copper its 61:39 spread between the isotopes.

Then using isotopic separation techniques, I propose to separate and enrich these from each other to make isotopically pure bullion bars that would sell for much much higher prices, probably comparable to high value precious metals like gold.

The isotopic separation consumes a lot of energy, so your isotopically enriched bullion's price then essentially becomes pegged against that of energy... this could be interesting for investors.

Finally, if you get your energy from sustainable power generation, then your bullion effectively becomes a green energy derived bullion of sorts... lots of marketing potential there and implications for sustainable economies.

Is this a good mad science idea for improved sustainability with undertones of alchemy or does it have no chance to fly?

See my blog for more details!

[Edited on 9-10-2013 by deltaH]

elementcollector1 - 9-10-2013 at 14:58

Problem is, isotopic separation often requires a centrifuge at melting temperatures - not at all easy for the amateur!

deltaH - 9-10-2013 at 15:03

Or solvent extraction and electrowinning, routinely done for copper... but you would just have to repeat it a few hundred times to get meaningful enrichment

[Edited on 9-10-2013 by deltaH]

bismuthate - 9-10-2013 at 15:08

I do admit this would by great for an element sample.

bfesser - 9-10-2013 at 15:37

I don't see the point. You waste a bunch of energy to isolate a specific isotope that has no practical value over the regular element. What exactly makes it more valuable? The fact that you've pumped a shit-tonne of energy into it for nothing? I doubt anyone will want to pay for spent energy that can't be recovered...

From a pure geek perspective, it would make for a damn fine element specimen!

bismuthate - 9-10-2013 at 15:48

It would have value to scientists however the average ignoramus would just say wtf is an isotope.
good idea for element collecting though.

halogen - 9-10-2013 at 15:59

Quote:

[Mining is] very environmentally destructive and that for a comparatively small amount of metal that is pretty useless except as a monetary 'value' metal. So I started thinking of how we can make much more common metals more valuable... without nearly as much damage as what the gold sector does... The isotopic separation consumes a lot of energy, so your isotopically enriched bullion's price then essentially becomes pegged against that of energy.

You may disagree with the value of this proposal, but its reason d'estre was spelled out. Mass psychology, unfortunately, most unfortunately, is as it is. Given that, I think it it's good, but changing so many people's habit would be too rough. For limited specialized purposes perhaps, but that defeats your point.

[Edited on 10-10-2013 by halogen]

Mixell - 9-10-2013 at 16:09

The value of goods is mostly governed by the demand/supply ratio. Precious metals have a high ratio of such: being crucial to various industries and having an aesthetic value on one hand, and being pretty scarce on the other.

Isotopically specific common metals may have a limited demand for some specific applications, but they will not be more valuable compared to the naturally occurring isotopic composition in regards to most applications. You will essentially spend a lot of money/time/energy to make a large amount of product with a very low demand.

halogen - 9-10-2013 at 16:32

Yes. Cotton pulp is pretty darn important to industry. That's why we print "MONEY" on it.

Which industry is gold is "crucial" to? Besides jewelry.

elementcollector1 - 9-10-2013 at 16:41

Quote: Originally posted by halogen

Yes. Cotton pulp is pretty darn important to industry. That's why we print "MONEY" on it.

Which industry is gold is "crucial" to? Besides jewelry.

How about electronics?
How about aerospace?
How about nuclear chemistry?

bismuthate - 9-10-2013 at 16:43

Investing
scamming

crazyboy - 9-10-2013 at 18:23

The wiki article states

Quote:

Isotopes of Carbon, Oxygen, and Nitrogen can be purified by chilling these gases or compounds nearly to their liquification temperature in very tall columns (200 to 700 feet tall—70 to 200 meters). The heavier isotopes sink and the lighter isotopes rise, where they are easily collected. The process was developed in the late 1960s by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory.[8] This process is also called "cryogenic distillation".

Could this be applied to metals? Molten potassium for example?

deltaH - 10-10-2013 at 00:34

Hi guys, thanks all for the comments.

I actually screened the periodic table for candidates throughout. It's actually a very rare thing for an element to have few stable isotopes (or just two which is ideal), as well as having them both in something close to a 50:50 distribution and be practical for other reasons.

I was actually amazed to find that both copper and silver, the historical [other] value metals besides for gold to fit the requirements exactly. That's one HECK of a coincidence!

Anyhow, @crazyboy, I didn't want to bring this up, but yeah, when isotopes have a distribution close to 50:50, distillation becomes an attractive route to enrichment, but that would require crazy high temperatures... about 2570C in the boiler for copper at atmospheric pressure!

But this is sciencemadness, so let me dream a little and speculate how one might construct such a copper distillation column:

It would need to be made out of a synthetic graphite column, fortunately graphitic cylinders are commercially sold as segments. There would need to be a vacuum gap between this inner cylinder and the outer wall of the steel column for insulation and the inside of this outer wall would need to be mirrored to reflect back the immense radiation emitted at those temperatures. The column would need to be REALLY tall and would have to contain some kind of packing made out of graphite too on the inside. You could electrically heat the boiler which holds a pool of molten copper metal, ?inductively?, that's not too much of a problem I would guess, and your condenser at the top could simply be a portion that doesn't have the radiation shielding, so would cool by radiative loses. You would simply have a water coil some short distance away that is blackened. Molten copper doesn't 'wet' graphite, instead it would just bead on it, so your graphite packing on the inside wouldn't work just like that. Fortunately some research has been done on this and addition of a small amount of chromium to the copper remedies this because a thin layer of chromium carbides forms on the surface of the graphite and then copper fully wets the graphite at high temperatures.

I have spent some time trying to think out a clever way that copper could be enriched on a very small scale at home by other means. Solvent extraction methods are too much of a schlep.

One possibility I thought of was something similar to an electrophoresis type device. You have copper electrodes immersed at the ends of a rectangular horizontal tray filled with some stationary phase, let's say silica gel, but there may be better things for metal ions. Also, you soak the whole thing in an acidic electrolyte, say H2SO4(dil.).

Now you automate the following process that needs to happen repeatedly: First, at the copper anode the copper metal is oxidised at the one side forming copper sulfate.

Cu => Cu(2+) + 2e-

Which is attracted to the opposite cathode electrode on the far side of the tray, except getting there is not so easy as the copper ions repeatedly adsorb and desorb on the stationary phase.

As this copper makes it's way along the length of the tray, the front zone will enrich in the lighter isotope slightly because of the kinetic isotopic effect, i.e. the copper ions constantly have to hop on then hop off between the stationary phase and the electrolyte and the lighter isotope can do this slightly faster than the heavier one.

Ideally if your tray is long enough, you might be lucky and have your band actually break up into two bands, one being copper sulfate of the one isotope and the other, but somehow I doubt this would happen unless your tray was ridiculously long, I would guess that it would simple be enriching somewhat between the front and back of one band.

Anyhow, on the other side, when the band arrives, you electrodeposit the copper onto your electrode but using two immersed electrodes, the one is made negative for the first half of the arriving band and another for the second half. That way the one has a layer of enriched lighter isotope and the other the heavier one. When you reverse this, you start by oxidising the lighter copper electrode first and then the heavier one so that you propogate this enrichment for the next cycle where it enriches more.

Do this backwards and forwards several times and you should have major enrichment!

Ok there's lots of other things I'd like to say about this, but let the discussion develop a little first.

[Edited on 10-10-2013 by deltaH]

deltaH - 10-10-2013 at 01:22

Another coincidence that makes this attractive for copper is this:

If you're trading in isotopic copper bullion, one thing you would probably be worried about would be counterfeiting, after all, ordinary copper would be almost indistinguishable by conventional means. Off course one could do mass spectrocopy, but that's a bit of an expensive instrument!

BUT

I was thinking if there was a somewhat simpler way to non-destructively test such a bullion coin for example by simply putting it between a coil.

I believe there is, you could use NMR. Now I DON't mean in the same way as chemists use it to determine structure, that's an insanely sensitive version that uses extreme magnetic fields to induce degeneracy in the signals and get structural info out of it.

What I'm talking about is the very simple version, simple locking on and measuring the signal from the nuclear resonance for each isotope.

In theory, though I know very little about electronics, could one not do this with a coil around your sample and some RF circuitry and signal processing.

As I understand it, one could use the earth's natural magnetic field for this purpose if you just want to measure a signal for each isotopes resonance?

The fortunate coincidence is that both isotopes of copper are NMR active and have a large relative receptivity (10E-2)

This is an image of copper bullion from www.fullmetalbullion.com , I think it's darn pretty, now imagine an atomic symbol motif and .99 63Cu or .99 65Cu stamped on it!

I personally think copper is prettier than gold!

[Edited on 10-10-2013 by deltaH]

[Edited on 10.10.13 by bfesser]

[Edited on 10-10-2013 by deltaH]

bismuthate - 10-10-2013 at 03:16

deltaH you have exactly 100 posts.
this is nice in theory, but how will you achieve teperatures nescesary?
Also you need to make people believe that copper is more valuble than gold.
Try osmium bullions it's pretty, useful and rare.
I think that people on this forum would buy isotopic bullions of copper if you made them.
If this does work then NMR could find false bullions.

Pyro - 10-10-2013 at 03:22

Quote: Originally posted by crazyboy

The wiki article states

Quote:

Could this be applied to metals? Molten potassium for example?

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaseous_diffusion
they purify uranium (which is a metal) to weapons grade by first concerting it to UF6 which has a low BP. the same should be possible with other metals

deltaH - 10-10-2013 at 03:25

@Pyro I stand to be corrected, but I don't know any simple volatile compounds for copper or silver?

bismuthate - 10-10-2013 at 03:27

URANIUM BULLIONS!
just kidding athough uranium will be very valuable soon so having some is a good idea.

deltaH - 10-10-2013 at 03:37

Quote:

thanks @bismuthate, I don't think there would be a big problem in reaching those temperature by inductive heating, so long as the system is well insulated and at such temperatures radiation insulation (mirroring) becomes extremely important. It's more a problem of working with expensive materials such as synthetic graphite.

But I'm keen to try to play with other ways of doing this in the amateur context, for example the electrophoresis type method. Granted, I could probably only make milligram amounts this way, but...

As for convincing people... it all starts with one

bismuthate - 10-10-2013 at 03:44

I'm convinced. I think you should sell samples to raise money for your idea.

papaya - 10-10-2013 at 03:44

May different isotopes have different densities?
deltaH, from the first day on this forum you propose (harvest ? :O ) different ideas, will you show us the outcome of any ?

bismuthate - 10-10-2013 at 03:56

papaya these are hard and long lasting projects let's give him a break before we start judging. He'll probaly have results sooner or later.

blogfast25 - 10-10-2013 at 04:48

Quote: Originally posted by deltaH

Then using isotopic separation techniques, I propose to separate and enrich these from each other to make isotopically pure bullion bars that would sell for much much higher prices, probably comparable to high value precious metals like gold.

The market for isotopically pure copper or silver must be really small. I mean, who really needs that except for a few researchers? So if you're thinking really small scale and using 'free' energy (there's no such thing of course) then maybe, just maybe...

deltaH - 10-10-2013 at 05:18

@papaya, since I've come on this site, I've also published two ideas that have been demonstrated by me, i mean have already been experimented on and seems to work. The first was for cyanurate fire fighting plaster, the second for my choline soap.

However, nobody wrote anything there, that's fine, probably too boring, but don't tell me I didn't also do experimentation.

These ideas are newer or harder to begin experimenting with, but they are about to get underway, i'm just waiting on some things, but there should be no reason to not start discussing them.

MrHomeScientist - 10-10-2013 at 06:00

I'll third the opinions/questions of bfesser and blogfast, which have yet to be addressed:
What is the purpose of isotopically pure copper and silver? Who would use it? Why would it be "much much" more valuable than the un-enriched metal? Also, how is copper and silver mining less inherently environmentally damaging than gold mining?

Sure it's interesting from a mad science perspective, but beyond being a scientific curiosity and for some niche researchers I don't see this really going anywhere.

[Edited on 10-10-2013 by MrHomeScientist]

woelen - 10-10-2013 at 06:17

What deltaH describes has been done in the recent past. I have seen isotopically pure copper powder on eBay for research purposes, pick-up only, in Amsterdam, or if it had to be shipped, using special courier service with insurance, no price for shipping specified on eBay. Cost: EUR 500000,- or something like that for 100 gram. This was a few years ago.

[Edited on 10-10-13 by woelen]

watson.fawkes - 10-10-2013 at 06:20

Quote: Originally posted by deltaH

Then using isotopic separation techniques, I propose to separate and enrich these from each other to make isotopically pure bullion bars [...]

I'm certain that every seeker of isotopically enriched uranium would take quite an interest at any technique that's workable at an amateur scale that can enrich any reasonably heavy element, even one at half the nuclear mass. Good luck on your new life.

deltaH - 10-10-2013 at 06:25

Hi MrHomeScientist

Quote:

What is the purpose of isotopically pure copper and silver?

Monetary... just like gold, except that here the cost is not about rarity but by a built in difficulty to manufacture. The classic example is aluminium metal, before the days when electrorefinining existed, aluminium metal was very costly because it was hard to reduce, but it's oxidized compounds were plentiful.

Quote:

Who would use it?

While stable isotopic chemicals have many practical uses, I can't think of any for copper per say, this is purely for monetary reasons. Yes that idea would take time for people to change over too, but I believe it's a more sustainable form of bullion, which brings us to...

Quote:

Also, how is copper and silver mining less inherently environmentally damaging than gold mining?

Because of rarity, per ton of ore you have to process to get your metal, the amount of copper is much more, this means less waste on energy requirements as well as chemical waste and waste ore afterwards.

Look, it's like print money, it's valuable not because it actually can be used to make fire with or whatever, but because the government has made it very hard to forge and so can control it's supply and assign perceived value to it.

Isotopically enriched copper is very hard to make, so it's rare in that form, even though it's not rare in it's normal form. It cost's me $100000/kg to make it (thumb sucked number), so I am only prepared to sell it to you for $200000/kg and so a trading prices is established for it, since nobody can make it for less than that, and if they improve on the separation, so the price drops a little, but the point is that it will always be high because isotopes are nearly identical and so the separation costs will always be high.

But so long as you make it by sustainable means, you are doing less damage than the equivalent if you were using a system based on gold bullion.

[Edited on 10-10-2013 by deltaH]

deltaH - 10-10-2013 at 06:30

Quote:

What deltaH describes has been done in the recent past. I have seen isotopically pure copper powder on eBay for research purposes, pick-up only, in Amsterdam, or if it had to be shipped, using special courier service with insurance, no price for shipping specified on eBay. Cost: EUR 500000,- or something like that for 100 gram. This was a few years ago.

Very interesting @woellen! I wonder if it wasn't a scam though. I know there is a stable isotopes company that sells enriched copper, but their prices were absolutely insane, so these ebay versions might be a scam?

deltaH - 10-10-2013 at 06:34

Found them again, these guys at Cambridge Isotope Laboratories:

http://www.isotope.com/cil/products/listproducts.cfm?cat_id=...

but it says please inquire for price in the catalogue where copper is listed

woelen - 10-10-2013 at 06:34

I did not check its legit status, it might have been a scam, but on the other hand, if you really want to spend half a million of euros, then you do not simply pay to an unknown eBay account. The eBay seller, however, did not want you simply to click the "Buy now" button, but wanted to have personal contact with a potential buyer and have things arranged behind the scenes.

-----------------------------------------

There is one major flaw in the use of isotopically pure elements as currency, with prices depending on the price of energy. One can expect that in the (relatively near, e.g. few tens of years from now) future fusion becomes a main power source and once this is common like we now have electricity plants based on natural gas or charcoal, then the price of energy will drop strongly. In such cases, the price of enriched elements may drop strongly, because the need to use huge amounts of energy is no reason anymore for high prices.

[Edited on 10-10-13 by woelen]

phlogiston - 10-10-2013 at 06:36

The price will not be pegged to energy costs. Rather, the market (demand/supply) will set the price.
(Here's why: if there is insuficient demand, people are not willing to buy it from you at the going price, so you can produce all the scarce material that you want but you'll be left with it. In other words, if it is not profitable to produce it given the production costs, nobody will do so (except for a few mad scientists just for the fun of it).

While you thought about the supply side quite well (it is difficult and costly to make), you should consider the demand as well.

Only a tiny amount is currently needed to cover industrial/scientific needs.

Significant demand will occur only if it becomes accepted as money on a large scale, which would probably require some government to adopt it as its national currency.
I don't think there is much chance of that happening since there don't seem to be any benefits to this currency over traditional precious metals.

I think a stable isotope that is actually very useful in large quantities, like 3He would have a better chance.

[Edited on 10-10-2013 by phlogiston]

halogen - 10-10-2013 at 06:50

I concede gold is handy in electronics. Even there, demand is relatively small. Compare industrial demand to jewelry itself - it's dwarfed. And there's nothing "beautiful" about gold that isn't beautiful in "worthless" alloys. Except that our culture uses it as a symbol.

[Edited on 10-10-2013 by halogen]

MrHomeScientist - 10-10-2013 at 07:28

Quote: Originally posted by phlogiston

The price will not be pegged to energy costs. Rather, the market (demand/supply) will set the price.
(Here's why: if there is insuficient demand, people are not willing to buy it from you at the going price, so you can produce all the scarce material that you want but you'll be left with it. In other words, if it is not profitable to produce it given the production costs, nobody will do so (except for a few mad scientists just for the fun of it).
...
Significant demand will occur only if it becomes accepted as money on a large scale, which would probably require some government to adopt it as its national currency.
I don't think there is much chance of that happening since there don't seem to be any benefits to this currency over traditional precious metals.

That is exactly the point I was trying to make, thanks for wording it better than I could

I tried to come up with a snappy analogy to add to this, but am currently failing at organizing my thoughts. If I come up with something sufficiently clever, I'll add it here

deltaH - 10-10-2013 at 11:13

Thanks all for the interesting points, you all have valid points off course. I can but hope that someday people might make the changeover because I believe it to be more sustainable.

Until then, I'm going to have a bit of fun with kitchen 'electrophoresis' if one can even call it that

I've often done chromatographic work, so I'm very curious to start playing with the electric version.

I wonder if one just crushes up silica gel kitty litter (we do have the very plain one that has nothing else added), if one could use it as a stationary phase... I can't see why not?

I'll report back on what I see, I'm just very curious if I'm going to be able to even get a band to move across in the first place... baby steps!

bismuthate - 10-10-2013 at 11:17

If you want to release this to the public you need to call it something different like "utopian silver" and say it's rare.
It's a shame that the general public can't appreciate the sheer purity like a scientist.

deltaH - 10-10-2013 at 11:23

Actually I might get a 'standard' chromatography set up to work for this... would be easier than messing around with electric fields.

deltaH - 10-10-2013 at 11:24

@bismuthate

lol! yeah or tibetan copper lol

phlogiston - 10-10-2013 at 11:25

Ah, sorry, I missed your post. Indeed, we agree.

@halogen, the value of gold is probably not justifiable by its immediate usefulness. The difference is that it has had such a long history of being liked for its shininess that it retained this irrational value today.

Good luck trying to induce the same passion for rare isotopes. You need the mental eye of a (mad) scientist to see and appreciate the beauty 'under the hood'. For anyone else, it feels, tastes and looks like regular gold.

bismuthate - 10-10-2013 at 11:27

Tastes? Though there are people who make element collections maybe someone should make an isotope collection.

deltaH - 10-10-2013 at 11:27

So no excuse for being a broke scientist... all you need is 50g copper sulfate, a chromatography column and a hell of a lot of time and effort to run columns lol

I feel a little like Marie and Pierre Curie trying to separate out trace polonium from pitchblend!!! lol

Oh dratz, there I've officially tripped all the NSA alarm bells, we've used uranium, isotopic enrichment and pitchblend in the same thread!

bismuthate - 10-10-2013 at 11:30

I don't need to worry my goverment is shut down. Joke's on you

deltaH - 10-10-2013 at 11:32

Quote:

Tastes? Though there are people who make element collections maybe someone should make an isotope collection.

Just do tin and you would have a collection already... TEN stable isotopes!

bismuthate - 10-10-2013 at 11:38

I meant pure samples of every iosotope of every element.
Like the ultimate periodic table.

ElectroWin - 10-10-2013 at 18:45

Quote: Originally posted by woelen

Cost: EUR 500000,- or something like that for 100 gram.

there must be techniques available to make this much cheaper. i have a use for dozens of isotopically pure substances, i just dont want to pay that much.

what about laser-assisted ion separation?
http://www.google.com/patents/US3443087

watson.fawkes - 10-10-2013 at 19:24

Quote: Originally posted by ElectroWin

there must be techniques available to make this much cheaper.

Why do you think that? Isotopic separation is just plain difficult, requiring expensive equipment that's expensive to run. Not to mention the test equipment to characterize the product is itself expensive (mass spectrometer).

I'd be impressed if an amateur could make 1 g of ⁠⁠⁠¹³C, and that's a pretty easy target, with ~ 8% mass distinction and a dirt cheap substrate. There's already a huge ratio of doing-nothing over doing-something with deuterium extraction on this board, and you don't even need to invent much to do that. Isotopic separation of anything heavier than deuterium is increasingly expensive.

froot - 10-10-2013 at 22:37

Noble metals are are relatively rare, chemically unreactive and have distinct characteristics such as high density. These characteristics appeal to one's perception of value.
Isotopically pure non-noble metals are rare, chemically reactive and are much lighter than noble metals. For me that would make them scientific curiosities more than anything else, and, if I told you that copper bullion bar in front of us was pure Cu^65, how would you know? There are no determining factors between Cu^63 or 65 and a standard piece of copper. You'd rather trade with gold because when you pick up a piece of gold, you'll know it's gold and you won't need to worry about storing it in an inert atmosphere.

Now... If you manage to isotopically separate Pt, you'll have my full attention, both as a curiosity and it's scientific value.

phlogiston - 11-10-2013 at 01:13

Another drawback is that it could be easily destroyed by alloying with naturally occuring metal.
Noble metals can be alloyed too, but they can be recovered again at relatively minor cost.

deltaH - 11-10-2013 at 02:02

@froot

Quote:

... if I told you that copper bullion bar in front of us was pure Cu^65, how would you know?

To be fair, even gold is routinely counterfeited with tungsten innards. Non destructive testing always requires some kind of a machine and I had pointed out that the nice thing about copper is that both isotopes are NMR active and fairly strongly so, therefore, a simple testing device to non destructively assay such an alloy could in theory be constructed... ?could even be made handheld?. See earth field NMR.

Quote:

You'd rather trade with gold because when you pick up a piece of gold, you'll know it's gold...

Hope you've never bought 'gold' from ebay

Quote:

...storing it in an inert atmosphere.

Presumably you won't leave a gold bar lying on your fireplace mantle top, similarly you would probably keep any small bullion bar at least in a plastic pouch or a small padded box... i'm pretty sure copper would do just fine in such a situation, would dull slightly, but so what, besides, you could give it a shine one in ten years surely

Quote:

Now... If you manage to isotopically separate Pt, you'll have my full attention, both as a curiosity and it's scientific value.

I think your idea for platinum is great and I agree with you, there is a consumer perceived value attached to extreme inertness and very high density. Platinum has quiet a few isotopes but there are three that occur in sufficient abundance to be of interest: 194Pt@33%, 195Pt@34% and 196Pt@25%, however, as watson.fawkes mentioned, the higher in atomic mass you go, the harder to separate. You're now getting into the realm of equivalent isotopic separation difficulty to that of uranium... in fact, if you want to enrich platinum, you would probably have to do it with hot platinum hexafluoride gas in centrifuges and my gosh... can you imagine the corrosion problems with hot PtF6 gas!

deltaH - 11-10-2013 at 02:35

@electrowin

Quote:

...there must be techniques available to make this much cheaper.

I still think the cheapest way to do this is a old school liquid chromatographic column because you can get a large number of theoretical stages with such a setup... however, I'm under no illusions that you wouldn't need to repeat this many many times over to get appreciable enrichment, but I don't see why it's not plausible or not within the reach of the amateur chemist... albeit one that has a lot of time on his hands.

phlogiston - 11-10-2013 at 04:17

you also need to come up with an accurate method for assaying your fractions.

Don't underestimate the amount of work.

Although you seem content with just speculating and guessing, perhaps it is time to do a few minutes of googling for you, just to get an idea if your approach is feasible.

Copper isotopes on an Ion exchange resin:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703701...
They mention a mass fractionation coefficient of 0.67 promille.

So you would need a little more than 1700 steps to go from 30.8% 63Cu. to 95%.

You should probably automate the process. Also because you'll need to repeat it many times to obtain significant amounts.

Marvin - 11-10-2013 at 08:36

Quote: Originally posted by deltaH

the nice thing about copper is that both isotopes are NMR active and fairly strongly so, therefore, a simple testing device to non destructively assay such an alloy could in theory be constructed... ?

This might work with salts but I would expect it to fail with metal bars.

deltaH - 11-10-2013 at 09:36

@marvin

Could you elaborate please?

deltaH - 11-10-2013 at 09:43

Can somebody volunteer @phlogiston's article please. I cannot access it. Thanks.

bfesser - 11-10-2013 at 09:59

Please request papers in <a href="forumdisplay.php?fid=21">References</a>, not in public fora:
<a href="viewthread.php?tid=25035">Wanted References and Needed Translations (9)</a>

[edit] I've <a href="viewthread.php?tid=25035&page=8#pid302937">requested the paper</a> on your behalf—because I'd like something to read. Don't expect me to do the work for you next time, though. And be sure to send a thank you U2U to whomever retrieves it.

[Edited on 11.10.13 by bfesser]

deltaH - 11-10-2013 at 11:17

Oh crud... need to request access for that too, poor @polverone... I'm giving him a lot of work. Thanks for the request @bfesser

bfesser - 11-10-2013 at 11:47

Huh. I thought you would have requested References access before Whimsy. When you're granted access, you'll see that the paper has already been retrieved by Dany.

What's up with the @ before usernames?

deltaH - 11-10-2013 at 11:53

Just a bad habit for making names stand out... I need to quit doing that! So far people have been mostly attaching references they refer to.

bfesser - 11-10-2013 at 12:04

Yup. People do that a lot, but it's good practice to keep them in the private forum so they don't show up on Google. We don't need Polverone getting sued or the website shutdown because some publication's arsehole lawyers decide to actively enforce their copyright. It's not an official policy (yet), but I'm trying to steer members in that direction.

[edit] I use boldface type ( [b] or ), as that's how the board software displays usernames.

[Edited on 11.10.13 by bfesser]

deltaH - 11-10-2013 at 12:08

Yeah my thoughts the same and agreed!

deltaH - 11-10-2013 at 14:57

Quote:

They mention a mass fractionation coefficient of 0.67 promille.

So you would need a little more than 1700 steps to go from 30.8% 63Cu. to 95%.

This is indeed very large! How did you work this out?

Yes automation is key, which is why I was initially fond of some electrophoresis version where you could send the ions backwards and forwards across the length of some stationary phase.

Thanks for the paper, I now know that I can use a ionic resin as the stationary phase and 3M HCl to elute with.

Now to figure out the simplest way to automate this... there's lots of room for creative problem solving here lol

ElectroWin - 11-10-2013 at 15:57

Quote: Originally posted by watson.fawkes

Isotopic separation is just plain difficult, requiring expensive equipment that's expensive to run. Not to mention the test equipment to characterize the product is itself expensive (mass spectrometer).

dangit, i want the future to be here already..
then i could just employ maxwell's demon to do my dirty work.

phlogiston - 14-10-2013 at 14:46

Quote: Originally posted by deltaH

This is indeed very large! How did you work this out?

I intentionally left this as an exercise for the student

The math is not difficult (if I can do it, nearly anyone can).

Also, read up on 'theoretical plates' if you have to. This is an important concept in chromatography and will help you realise how making a column with ion-exchange resin, rather than doing it 'batch-wise', will help in terms of the number of purification steps you need.

It shouldn't be too hard to automate an ion-exchange based approach.

[Edited on 14-10-2013 by phlogiston]