thermal diffusion

noun

, Physical Chemistry.

1. the separation of constituents, often isotopes, of a fluid under the influence of a temperature gradient.

Example Sentences

Frisch and his fellow refugee Rudolf Peierls, who also was becalmed at Birmingham, calculated how much equipment would be needed to acquire a pound of 235 by thermal diffusion, which employs temperature differentials to separate the 235 and 238 isotopes by weight.

From Literature

Working on a navy contract quietly and virtually single-handedly at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Lawrence’s former graduate student Philip Abelson had perfected a way of enriching uranium by thermal diffusion.

From Literature

Masa Takeuchi, who had played a central role in researching thermal diffusion under Nishina, said in the 1960s that Japanese researchers had completed a thermal diffusion device that would have allowed extraction of uranium 235 as early as 1944, but U.S. bombings destroyed their secret facilities.

From Los Angeles Times

Last week, however, word came from Stockholm that a Swedish scientist had been building thermal diffusion tubes expected to speed up U-235 production 11,000 times, when he was stopped by the war raging around his beleaguered country.

From Time Magazine Archive

It gave the job to Cleveland's H. K. Ferguson Co., builder of the thermal diffusion unit* of the Oak Ridge atom bomb plant.

From Time Magazine Archive