Determination of physical adsorption loss of primary standard gas mixtures in cylinders using cylinder-to-cylinder division

Abstract

Primary standard gas mixtures (PSMs) are typically prepared in cylinders and the amount-of-substance fractions are determined by purity analysis and gravimetric method. However, the actual amount-of-substance fraction can be different from the gravimetrically determined value due to adsorption loss onto the internal surface of cylinders. The resulted difference due to the adsorption loss can be larger than the PSM uncertainty. In this study, the cylinder-to-cylinder division method is proposed to evaluate any potential physical adsorption loss onto the internal surface of cylinders. A method for estimating the amount of adsorption loss, the corrected amount-of-substance fraction and its uncertainty due to the adsorption loss is described.