Laboratory evaluation of silica gel sorbent tubes for sampling hydrogen fluoride

The NIOSH sampling and analytical method for inorganic acids employs a silica gel sorbent tube for the collection of five common inorganic acids with simultaneous determination of these acids in a single sample by ion chromatography. When the method was extended to the determination of hydrogen fluoride (HF) the sampled HF reacted with the silica gel and glass fiber of the sampler, but the reaction products remained trapped on the sorbent. Silica gel samplers were evaluated for the collection of HF from laboratory generated atmospheres. Factors tested included capacity, storage stability, humidity, accuracy and precision. Based on comparison with impinger collection, the mean recovery of HF from silica gel tube samples was 100.7% with a precision of 0.144.