Venting Hydrogen from GC

[MichaelVW]

When hydrogen is used as a carrier gas, a few mL/min exit the GC. Agilent recommends venting to a fume hood or outside. Is that just safety theater? It's hard to see how a few mL could do any real harm.

Don't get me wrong, I would like a path to a fume hood or to outside and have been asking management for one for two and a half years. But I want it mostly because I'm running PCBs on an ECD. I have a carbon trap but I'd rather not have to bother with that.

I'm thinking of just running short lengths of tubing from the split vent, septum purge, and ECD exhaust line and have them all join together before finally venting out. It would be a mix of 90% nitrogen and 10% hydrogen. No real fire risk that I can see. Thoughts?

[cjm]

We were told once that hydrogen dissipates so quickly there should rarely ever be a fire risk unless you had maintained column flow into an MSD with pumps off.

We have over a dozen systems, all were converted years ago to hydrogen, and we've had no safety concerns.