Chromatography Forum

Hello everyone,

I have a HP5890 GC. It works well when I use the TCD of GC to detect the Argon/N2 mixture with Helium as carrying gas.

Recently, I need to find out the Helium-3 in a tank. Is it possible that my current setup of my GC would work to find out Helium-3? In my understanding, I might need to switch the carrying gas to avoid Helium 4. But I found a paper, it was about detecting Helium-3/Hydrogen mixture with Helium-4 carrier gas. So, I got confused now.

It is very hard to find paper about detecting Helium-3 with TCD. Can someone give me some idea? I would really appreciate it!

I think you will need much more than a GC to separate helium-3 from helium-4. He-3 has a natural abundance of 0.01%

Hi Steve,

We are trying to detect whether our tank has Helium-3 inside or not. Basically, we are trying to prove the tank is full of high purity Helium-3.

IMO with GC you only can prove the tank is full of helium or something else.
To prove it is He3 - you need high-res MS sensor. There is small MS detectors for gas alaysis (low mass range 1-20)

To detect it by GC you would need a column which could separate Helium-3 from Helium-4 while using H2 or N2 as carrier gas. Not sure there is such a column.