Hydrogen-tritium exchange between glass-fiber filters and tritiated water

Abstract

Hydrogen exchange between glass and water takes place rather rapidly under certain conditions and can be a problem in certain analytical procedures. The exchange between tritiated water and glass-fiber filters was studied at several different temperatures. The exchange at 1, 50, 80, and 100/sup 0/C is attributed to exchange of interior hydrogens. The scatter of data points at the higher temperatures is at least partly due to uncertainties in the relatively large blank corrections, but the curves show no indication of leveling off due to complete exchange of all preexisting hydrogens in the glass. An almost 10-fold decrease in the exchange of hydrogen at 1/sup 0/C was brought about by pretreating the filters at 500/sup 0/C for 20 h, and far less exchange was also observed at 500/sup 0/ using pretreated filters. At the high temperature, there was no increase in exchange after 20 min for a period of as much as 7 h.