Tritium Radioactivity Determination of Biological Materials by Rapid Dry Combustion Technique

In pharmacological and biological research it is often necessary to determine the tritium radioactivity of a large number of samples of biological materials having varied specific activities. A practical method of measuring the radioactivity of large numbers of such samples is dry combustion of the material to water and carbon dioxide and determination of the radioactivity of the products using a liquid scintillation spectrometer. Since the currently available apparatus can accommodate only single samples of relatively small size, a furnace was designed which makes possible the rapid simultaneous combustion of three samples of up to 2 g dry weight. (auth)