Fundamental Equation of State for Deuterium

Abstract

World utilization of deuterium is anticipated to increase with the rise of fusion-energy machines such as ITER and NIF. We present a new fundamental equation of state for the thermodynamic properties of fluid deuterium. Differences between thermodynamic properties of orthodeuterium, normal deuterium, and paradeuterium are described. Separate ideal-gas functions were fitted for these separable forms together with a single real-fluid residual function. The equation of state is valid from the melting line to a maximum pressure of 2000 MPa and an upper temperature limit of 600 K, corresponding to available experimental measurements. The uncertainty in predicted density is 0.5% over the valid temperature range and pressures up to 300 MPa. The uncertainties of vapor pressures and saturated liquid densities are 2% and 3%, respectively, while speed-of-sound values are accurate to within 1% in the liquid phase.