South Africa has natural resources in mineral feedstock containing gold, manganese, chromium, vanadium, copper, antimony, phosphate rock, uranium, fluorspar and titanium. A high percentage of these ores are exported in unbeneficiated form. There are beneficiation opportunities to transform the raw materials to value-added products, thus increasing employment and stimulating the South African economy. Fluorocarbon (CxFy) gases can be produced via high-temperature plasma processes, where fluorspar and carbon (CaF2 + C) react at -6000K. These gases are traditionally separated by means of costly and unsafe cryogenic distillation. The focus of this project is to propose a feasible separation process and to interlink it to a plasma system in order to develop a conceptual plant that can produce 2500 t/a C2F4 and 625 t/a C3F6 safely and cost-effectively, both with 96% purity. To execute the above a literature survey was done giving vital information on absorption and distillation systems as well as membranes that can be used to separate CF4 from CxFy gas streams at acceptable pressures and temperatures. / Thesis (M.Sc. Engineering Sciences (Chemical Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus,

South Africa has natural resources in mineral feedstock containing gold, manganese, chromium, vanadium, copper, antimony, phosphate rock, uranium, fluorspar and titanium. A high percentage of these ores are exported in unbeneficiated form. There are beneficiation opportunities to transform the raw materials to value-added products, thus increasing employment and stimulating the South African economy. Fluorocarbon (CxFy) gases can be produced via high-temperature plasma processes, where fluorspar and carbon (CaF2 + C) react at -6000K. These gases are traditionally separated by means of costly and unsafe cryogenic distillation. The focus of this project is to propose a feasible separation process and to interlink it to a plasma system in order to develop a conceptual plant that can produce 2500 t/a C2F4 and 625 t/a C3F6 safely and cost-effectively, both with 96% purity. To execute the above a literature survey was done giving vital information on absorption and distillation systems as well as membranes that can be used to separate CF4 from CxFy gas streams at acceptable pressures and temperatures. / Thesis (M.Sc. Engineering Sciences (Chemical Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus,

High-resolution Thomson scattering system on the COMPASS tokamak provides electron temperature and density profiles in the central and edge plasma region. The spatial resolution in the edge plasma region is optimized for edge transport barrier studies. Formation of characteristic edge profiles (pedestals) is observed during high-confinement mode, i.e. the core electron temperature and density are raised up by the value of pedestal height. Both the electron and density pedestals are well-fitted by a modified hyperbolic tangent (mtanh) function, a five parameter model giving important parameters such as pedestal height and width, necessary for further analysis of the physics behind the transport barrier formation. A fitting technique of the full radial profiles of electron temperature, density and pressure during H-mode is also described. Using the fitting, electron temperature and density on top of pedestal are statistically processed to find a possible threshold for various H-mode regimes.