Iran’s deuterium oxide market

Fig 1. Iran has exported 70 tonnes of its deuterium oxide to US and Russia

 

The U.S. Department of Energy, or DOE, bought 32 metric tonnes of heavy water from Iran worth $8.6 million, a department spokeswoman said. Heavy water or deuterium oxide is a component of nuclear energy program that is not radioactive.

Under nuclear deal between Iran, the United States and five other world powers, Tehran can sell its heavy water.

U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told The Wall Street Journal that the United States tested Iran’s heavy water and “it’s perfectly good.” Moniz also said the U.S. purchase would be a “statement to the world” that Iran’s heavy water can be purchased.

U.S. officials hope the purchase will pave the way for other countries to buy the heavy water, which can be used in the development of semiconductors and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi said that the United States had been the first buyer of Iranian heavy water and some other world powers were now showing an interest.

According to a sale between Iran and Russia, Iran has exported about 38 tonnes of its heavy water to Russia. The general director of Russia’s State Corporation on Atomic Energy, Rosatom, confirmed that Iran delivered about 40 of heavy water to Russia.

 

Source:

www.reuters.com

www.wsj.com

Applications of deuterium oxide

Fig 1.Iranian heavy water reactor

The main application of deuterium oxide (heavy water) is in heavy water reactors. Deuterium oxide is used as a moderator and heat transport system in certain types of heavy water nuclear reactors. The other applications of deuterium oxide are as follows:

 

• Deuterated drugs: lower rates of metabolism, and a longer half-life.
• Industry: fiber optics and silicon semiconductors manufacturing.
• Human health: metabolic studies using deuterium oxide tracer.
• Oil & hydrology: studies using deuterium oxide tracer.
• Scientific research: manufacturing deuterated products such as deuterated NMR solvents and deuterium labeled compounds.
• Physics: neutrino detector and fusion process development using deuterium oxide.
• Biological science: probing metabolic characteristics using deuterium oxide. 

Countries make deuterium oxide

When Norsk Hydro began producing deuterium oxide (heavy water) in 1934, Norway became the first country with a commercial heavy water plant. The Nazi invasion of Norway in 1940 transferred control of the plant—and most of the world's deuterium oxide—to Germany. In the early 1940s, Allied countries joined the race for heavy water, and by 1944, the Manhattan Project had made 20 tons of the precious liquid, more than enough to fill the first heavy water nuclear reactor.

America's atomic weapons program ultimately relied more on graphite than on heavy water in nuclear reactors, but the United States has continued to produce deuterium oxide for military use ever since the '40s. Today, Canada and India, which both rely on heavy water nuclear power plants for electricity, make the most heavy water. Other countries with heavy water production facilities include Argentina, Iran, Romania, and Russia.

 

Fig 1. Norsk Hydro – Norwegian heavy water facility

Fig 2. Iran heavy water production plant

Source:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/hydro/water.html

History of deuterium oxide

Harold Urey discovered the isotope deuterium in 1931 and was later able to concentrate it in water. Urey's mentor Gilbert Newton Lewis isolated the first sample of pure deuterium oxide (heavy water) by electrolysis in 1933. George de Hevesy and Erich Hofer used heavy water in 1934 in one of the first biological tracer experiments, to estimate the rate of turnover of water in the human body. Emilian Bratu and Otto Redlich studied the auto dissociation of deuterium oxide in 1934.

 

Fig 1. Harold Urey discoverer of the deuterium

 

 

 

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water

Deuterium oxide definition

Deuterium oxide or heavy water (D₂O) is a form of water that is composed of deuterium and oxygen. Deuterium, also called heavy hydrogen is an isotope of hydrogen with a nucleus consisting of one proton and one neutron, which is double the mass of the nucleus of ordinary hydrogen. The presence of deuterium gives the chemical different nuclear properties, and the increase of mass gives it different physical and chemical properties compared to normal "light water".

Fig 1. Heavy water and water chemical structures

Ordinary water as obtained from most natural sources contains about one deuterium atom for every 6,760 ordinary hydrogen atoms. and the residual water is thus enriched in deuterium content. The heavy water produced is used as a moderator of neutrons in nuclear power plants. In the laboratory heavy water is employed as an isotopic tracer in studies of chemical and biochemical processes.

Table 1. Physical properties of deuterium oxide

Properties	D2O (Heavy water)	H2O (Light water)
Freezing point	3.82 °C (38.88 °F)	0.0 °C (32 °F)
Boiling point	101.4 °C (214.5 °F)	100.0 °C (212 °F)
Density at STP (g/mL)	1.1056	0.9982
Temp. of maximum density	11.6 °C	3.98 °C[10]
Dynamic viscosity (at 20 °C, mPa·s)	1.2467	1.0016
Surface tension (at 25 °C, N/m)	0.07187	0.07198
Heat of fusion (kJ/mol)	6.132	6.00678
Heat of vaporisation (kJ/mol)	41.521	40.657
pH (at 25 °C)	7.44 ("pD")	7.0
pKb (at 25 °C)	7.44 ("pKb D2O")	7.0
Refractive index (at 20 °C, 0.5893 μm)	1.32844	1.33335

 

Source: 

https://www.britannica.com                 

https://en.wikipedia.org