Canada's Isowater Corp Advances Heavy Water Production

Canadian hydrogen isotopes supplier Isowater Corporation yesterday announced completion of a $3.2 million project to advance its D2X Process to produce heavy water (deuterium oxide, or D2O)

The Collingwood, Ontario-based company said availability of D2O has been on the decline for the past decade as inventories are consumed and existing limited production capacity ages. At the same time rapid escalation of demand is occurring both in the traditional nuclear market, it said, as well as new and growing life science, high tech and environmental technology applications. Isowater has developed a process to produce D2O at a variety of concentrations ranging from 70% to greater than 99.995%.

Isowater president and CEO Andrew Stuart said that, as the world supply of D2O "shifts to shortage", the D2X Process will provide a "scalable method" to produce high-purity D2O to non-nuclear users and eventually the nuclear energy market.

This method "can be built on a much smaller scale than traditional production methods and produce D2O at costs below new builds of current production technology," Stuart said. And compared with current commercial technology, it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 95% as well as completely eliminate noxious sulfur or ammonia compounds typically released to the environment, he said. The process is also suitable for private sector implementation "as opposed to historic technology which has been financed and operated by governments based on their nuclear energy policies", he said.

Source: World Nuclear News

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