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If I start with a mix of half H2O and half D2O, when it equilibrates it will be half HDO, a quarter H2O and a quarter D2O. My question is "how long does this take?". Ballpark is fine - microsecodnds? Days? Centuries?
What temperature/phase(solid, liquid, vapor)? Liquid kinetics are O(m) different from solid/vapor.Vanadium 50 said:If I start with a mix of half H2O and half D2O, when it equilibrates it will be half HDO, a quarter H2O and a quarter D2O. My question is "how long does this take?". Ballpark is fine - microsecodnds? Days? Centuries?
I believe he is talking about hydrogen-deuterium exchange, not just mixing.Bystander said:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage ;
Totally forgot about this. Liquid phase? Fast as you can mechanically mix/stir it together.
Light water is ordinary water composed mostly of hydrogen-1 (protium) and oxygen, and it's denoted as H2O. Heavy water, or deuterium oxide (D2O), is water in which both hydrogen atoms are replaced with deuterium, a heavier isotope of hydrogen. Semiheavy water, or HDO, contains one atom of deuterium and one atom of protium along with an oxygen atom.
Equilibrium between light, heavy, and semiheavy water occurs naturally through processes like evaporation, condensation, and mixing. At a molecular level, hydrogen atoms can exchange between different water molecules during chemical reactions, leading to a dynamic equilibrium among H2O, D2O, and HDO in a given sample of water.
Studying different types of water is crucial for various scientific and industrial applications. Heavy water, for example, is used as a neutron moderator in nuclear reactors. Understanding the properties and behaviors of these water types enhances our ability to use them effectively in fields like nuclear physics, environmental science, and isotopic tracing in biochemical research.
The presence of heavy and semiheavy water alters the physical properties of water, such as boiling point, melting point, and density. Heavy water has a slightly higher boiling point and melting point than light water. These differences affect the behavior of water under various conditions and can be crucial in scientific experiments and industrial processes.
Heavy water can be separated from a mixture using methods such as fractional distillation, which exploits the slight differences in boiling points between H2O and D2O. Another method is electrolysis, where differences in the bond energies lead to a preferential release of H2O over D2O. These methods can be used to increase the concentration of heavy water for specific uses.