I have a researcher who would like to run small-scale (~300 microliter) digestions with perchloric acid but we don't have a perchloric acid hood. Does anyone know of a trap that we could use in a regular fume hood to prevent vapors escaping to cause a safety hazard? Or perhaps the set-up described below is sufficient to minimize potential problems.
To quote: "The experiments that we run here and have been trying to bring back
to UWL involve a step where we assay for lipid concentration by
cleaving the phosphate group using perchloric acid. The cleavage is
done with only 300 uL of perchloric acid per sample, and the samples are
capped with a glass marble under reflux conditions (air cooled at the
tops of the tubes) so that very little, if any, perchloric acid escapes
from the tubes......The problem (I believe) is that the hoods at UWL are not spec'd for use
with perchloric acid. We have been trying to develop an alternative
assay, but it is not working and it is using a lot of time and
resources. Is there any way we can use the perchloric acid version at
home and move forward with meaningful experiments?."
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