by Doug Coulter » Fri Oct 01, 2010 8:20 am
I got my neon at Matheson too, and it's not cheap. Glantz is another source (they are a sign supply outfit) and no, it's not cheaper there either.
Believe it or not, Neon is a hazmat to both, and when I got my bottle, it was on its own pallet and the only thing in the truck, which added substantially to the costs. The bottle, hasmat shipping etc were about a grand, then the gas had to be paid for - about another half grand for what I got. Insane, but since that was the case, I got a lot of it, the gas was the cheap part of dealing with those guys. (this was true of deuterium as well -- paying $400 for the knee high cylinder, empty? Gheez -- it wasn't even new.)
Jerry, if you can put together a cylinder with the right valve etc...I can xfer some for you -- couple hundred psi in a small bottle? That works out to a lot the way anyone uses it. Glantz was selling single liters at STP in glass flasks for hundreds -- which is a lot more than I paid per liter for mine, even counting the ripoff prices I wound up paying for my large bottle.
I suggest that idea because if I have to scrounge a cylinder and prep it up for a rare gas, it's expensive for me to do that too. If all I have to do is hook it to my plumbing and bake it out and make the xfer, not so bad. Something like an old small welding Ar cylinder would do -- right valve, and they are pretty cheap -- and not so polluted inside considering what was in there.
Xenon and Krypton are insane right now. Between NASA and CERN, it's all bought up -- and the lighting guys get all the Krypton. However, there are a fair number of Xenon thyratrons out there, and flash tubes etc, so if a little is needed, you can recover from them. Most of those are at 2 atm, so it shouldn't (famous last words) be that hard to recover, if super purity isn't much issue.
Probably a couple of liters each in those big thyratrons I've got. You could arrange to break one inside a tight vacuum system and catch it coming out of the pumps or something like that.
Or a small cylinder could be filled with small breakable flash tubes and a metal ball, pulled down to vacuum, then shaken vigorously to break the tubes.
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.