Applications in laboratory glassware include use in fritted glass filter items, scrubbers, or spargers.
Other laboratory applications of fritted glass include packing in chromatography columns and resin beds for special chemical synthesis.
[2] Laboratory scale spargers (also known as gas diffusing stones or diffusors) as well as scrubbers, and gas-washing bottles (or Drechsel bottles[3]) are similar glassware items which may use a fritted glass piece fused to the tip of a gas-inlet tube.
The purpose of sparging is to saturate the enclosed liquid with the gas, often to displace another gaseous component.
Although such solutions only dissolve a negligible layer from the surface of ordinary labware, because frit particles are small, they expose a much larger surface area to the solution, and have tiny particle-contact areas vunerable to attack, resulting in gradual loss of particles.