Abstract: The tritium recovery from tritium-containing silica gel samples was measured by thermal desorption of tritium from silica gel, followed by ethylene glycol absorption to dissolve the released tritium oxides, and by catalytic oxidation to convert any elemental tritium to tritium oxides. The results show that tritium oxides are the predominant chemical state for tritium in silica gel. The tritium recovery is increased as the thermal desorption temperature increases, but is decreased as the carrier gas flow increases for a given desorption temperature. As much as 5% of tritium is retained in the silica gel after thermal desorption at 500℃ and scavenged by H₂ at 60 mL/min. The uncertainty of this method is estimated to be 0.55%.