Nitrogen Isotope Separation by Ion Exchange Chromatography

Enriched stable isotopes of many elements have been widely used in many aspects and such isotopes have been primarily used as the tracer for agricultural and biochemical studies and the availability of the isotopically labeled compounds have been now extensively increasing. Chemical exchange separation of isotopes is based on the equilibrium fractionation of isotopes between two phases, ion exchange isotope separation which is one of the chemical exchange methods, is based on the chemical equilibrium between a stationary phase and a mobile fluid phase. Displacement always results in a sharp boundary between the bands of eluted solute and displacing solute in this method. Displacement chromatographic ion exchange technology for isotope separation is described in this chapter. This chapter mainly divided into two sections. Ion exchange system, ion exchange separation and analysis are introduced in the former section as the basic theory and concept for ion exchange separation. The second section is about the experiment parts of nitrogen isotope separation which include nitrogen isotope application, nitrogen isotope separation process, nitrogen isotopic analysis with mass spectrometry and the obtained results and discussion which were performed by our recent experiments.