Synthesis of Tritium-Free Water for Liquid-Scintillation Counting II. Influence of Methane in Oxygen.

We planned to synthesize tritium-free water from natural gas which is presumed to contain no tritium. In the liquid scintillation counting method, tritium-free water is used to compensate for the background counts. To synthesize tritium-free water, we assembled an apparatus which is capable of oxidizing natural gas into water under conditions completely isolated from the environment. As previously reported, the quality of the water depends mainly on the material oxygen used. We synthesized water using conventional electrolyzed pure oxygen. Analysis by the electrolytic enrichment technique showed that there was almost no tritium in the synthesized water.