An interesting thought occurred to me.
I know that in industry, to get oxygen, nitrogen and argon, industrial gas suppliers often liquefy air under pressure and cooling, then use fractional distillation to pull out the separate components.
This makes sense.
I also know that in nuclear science, gaseous centrifuges spin uranium hexafluoride and are able to thus separate different isotopes of uranium by the slight difference in molecular weight. Centrifuging a gas apparently works under similar principle as liquids.
Question: If air were to be fed into a centrifuge, would it separate into it's component parts according to density? If so, why isn't this used? If not, why not?
Thanks!