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Mel B.

Enrichment of D2O

Dolores C Aquino  Follow

Fractional distillation can work, but the separation per round of distillation is very low so you would need a very large multi stage process to achieve significant separation.

Nobody uses direct distillation to produce heavy water as there are better chemical processes that achieve higher enrichment per stage, for example the Girdler sulphide process.

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Edward Lewis  Follow
The wikipedia page on the GS process actually mentions distillation as a common process to get from 15–20% D2O (the product from the GS process) to > 99% D2O.More
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Gurdeep Rahi  Follow
@SantoshKumar You can express thanks better by accepting the answer and up voting it.More
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Dan Zauner  Follow

For a comparison of different methods, including distillation and the Girdler processes, have a look atHeavy Water: A Manufacturers’ Guide for the Hydrogen Century

In this 14 pages document a survey of the different available processes is given. The distillation of water, as suggested by the OP is included. That process is the easiest but requieres huge energy input to perform. The distillation must be done under vacuum because the separation factor is higher than at normal pressure.

The processes that are used are based on exchange reactions. Among these the most used is the Girdler process based on $\ce{H2S}$ but other possibilities exist. However, this is the only one that does not require a catalyst.

Other processes are also considered briefly. An interesting point is that the estimated cost of production is given as 300 \$/kg $\ce{D2O}$.

A table with the characteristics of the different processes is included.

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