Dear all, what are the community thoughts on which acid to use to pre-acidify water samples planned for DOC extraction: HCl. H2SO4, H3PO4? I have seen them all used. Which is most friendly on the CF-IRMS glassware? Also, acidify before or after filtering? To what pH ? At least if it is after filtering and DOM ppts. (such as humics at pH 2), then it can still be recovered as part of the sample. Are there concerns about loss of acid-sensitive material from the pool? Extracting only the HMW pool will eliminate the need for acidification -yes?- but what if you are interested in the whole pool? Thanks, Susan -- ********************************************************* Dr. Susan Waldron, NERC Advanced Research Fellow, Centre for Geosciences, Dept. of Geography and Geomatics, University of Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland. Tel: 0141 330 2413 Fax: 0141 330 4894 email: [log in to unmask] http://www.geog.gla.ac.uk:443/staff/swaldron *********************************************************