Simplified tube cracker for opening samples sealed in glass tubes while under vacuum

Abstract

A new tube cracker design has been developed that provides an inexpensive, easily adaptable and more reliable means of cracking sealed glass tubes in a vacuum system in order to transfer the products of sealed tube combustion in the preparation of samples for stable isotopic analysis. The tube cracker consists, solely, of a glass tube, closed at the bottom, and with the barrel of a vacuum stopcock sealed into the side wall. A sample tube held in the apparatus is cracked open simply by closing the tap. To accommodate sample tubes of different sizes the basic apparatus can either be adjusted using smaller or larger size tubing or the existing apparatus used to crack any smaller sized tubing by means of an insert.