An efficient inexpensive multisleeve liquid scintillation counting system

This paper reports a method that conserves greatly on the cost of counting radioactive samples for liquid scintillation counting. It accomplishes this by using several glass sleeves that are much more inexpensive than conventional counting and/or minivials, and because volumes of counting fluid are reduced the cost of the counting fluid is also markedly reduced. The usual vial system (A) uses 15 ml of counting fluid with 37% efficiency for tritum; the minivial uses .75 ml with 37% efficiency while 0.15 and 30 μl volumes gave approximately 21% efficiency. Another feature of this system is the capacity to reuse the outer sleeve(s) and dispose of the smaller counting vessel. This means that less counting fluid and glass will have to be disposed of in the environment.