Improvements in the gaseous hydrogen-water equilibration technique for hydrogen isotope ratio analysis
Improved precision in the H 2 -H 2 O equilibration method for δD analysis has been achieved in an automated system. Reduction in 1- σ standard deviation of a single mass-spectrometer analysis to 1.3 ‰ is achieved by (1) bonding catalyst to glass rods and assigning use to specific equilibration chambers to monitor performance of catalyst, (2) improving the apparatus design, and (3) reducing the H 3 + contribution of the mass-spectrometer ion source. For replicate analysis of a water sample, the standard deviation improved to 0.8 ‰ . H 2 S-bearing samples and samples as small as 0.1 mL can be analyzed routinely with this method.
Analytical Chemistry↗