Center for Emerging Energy Sciences

                     

Advanced Materials Fabrication & Diagnostics:

 

Deuterium and Protium Purification System

We have developed a method that eliminates the ⁴He isotopes from the as-delivered stock supply of protium or deuterium gas.   Our FT-ICR MS techniques described above are used to determine the low ambient level of ⁴He in this supply gas.  In all cases encountered to date, the ambient ⁴He concentrations in hydrogen supply gasses have been lowered to undetectable levels (< 0.001 ppm). We also purge the environments that surround our cells and instruments to < 0.005 ppm of ⁴He, to prevent any accidental mis-interpretation of ambient ⁴He for produced ⁴He in our experiments. We also check for any air invasion isotopes (²⁰Ne or ⁴⁰Ar) in every aliquot during mass spectrometry.