Long days and evenings – not only for packing all equipment, but also for preparation of electropolished canisters that I will be using for air sampling.
Canisters are evacuated to 10-4 Torr and flushed with UHP He 3 times (with evacuations in between). To make sure that volatiles are flushed out properly, canisters are also heated with suitable mantles to 100-120 deg Celsius. While the work itself is not difficult, one needs to be present to switch the valves of the vacuum system and check temperature and pressure on a regular basis. A set of 3 canisters takes about 3 hours to pre-clean.
