Calibrated vessel for one-step transfer decompression of fluids for gas analysis

¹ U. S. Navy Experimental Diving Unit, Washington, D. C.

This report describes a volumetrically calibrated ("to deliver") glass vessel which has been devised to solve the following fluid-sampling and handling problem: an accurately measured aliquot of the liquid phase of a hyperbaric gas-liquid equilibration system was to be removed from a tonometer located inside a pressurized recompression chamber, decompressed to atmospheric pressure, and displaced into a vacuum extraction chamber for subsequent gas chromatographic analysis of inert gases. It was felt that the pressure change and the manipulative techniques occurring between the original equilibration and the final analysis comprised a constant and significant risk to the entire experiment. This anaerobic fluid-sample transfer vessel limits the entire decompression-transfer phase to a single step, and therefore minimizes opportunities for sample contamination or loss of evolved gas due to anaerobic handling accidents.

Submitted on September 4, 1963