Glove Boxes

The nitrogen dry box offered by SPI Supplies is a completely enclosed chamber and its designed makes it ideal for working in a preferred atmosphere where the inert gas could be, for example, nitrogen, argon or Helium. The Basic Glove Box is a much simpler unit for applications where only isolation is required.

In addition, the unit is very compact, portable and lightweight. The design makes it easily moveable from lab to lab, for example, on a convenient cart made just for this purpose. Yet, moisture levels below 1% relative humidity are typically reached. The actual results achieved will depend on what is being done within the box and how often samples are exchanged, but ultimately the minimum moisture content is limited by the fact that the acrylic polymers from which the box is constructed are permeable to moisture. Much lower moisture levels can be achieved by continuously purging the chamber with dry nitrogen; this requires that the box be protected from overpressure by the installation of a pressure relief valve.

Everything one might need for immediate operation is included standard with the unit. All that has to be added is the gas of your choice and the research or production materials.

A growing number of users of these boxes are concerned about moisture levels down to the level of 10 ppm and less. This can be done by using large amounts (0.5 liter/minute, continuous flow) of dry nitrogen. However, unless you have an institutional dry nitrogen line available, this may not be a practical approach. Any opening of the chamber to introduce or remove samples would add to the nitrogen use rate. In our own work with moisture sensitive catalysts, the chamber has been adequate, but we are careful to plan our experiments so that the samples are exposed to the chamber atmosphere for only the shortest possible time.