Analysis of Cascades Composed of Two Types of Separators Based on the Segmented Q-Cascade

It is possible that an isotope separation cascade uses two types of separators having different separation factors. Arrangement of the separators in the cascade may affect its separation performance and, therefore, finding the appropriate arrangement is of interest in practice. Six arrangements are considered, four of which have the schemes of a single cascade with four segments, and two have the schemes of a double cascade with two segments on each cascade. Based on the segmented Q-cascade, different separators are installed in different segments. Taking the cascade relative total flow as the objective of optimization, analyses are performed on the relations of the relative total flow with separation factors and the ratio of the two separators. The results show that different arrangements result in different performances, which can be significant. The double cascade scheme is the best.