Rapid Greenhouse Gas Analysis

Air Monitoring, Methods, and Technology
Oral Presentation

Prepared by A. Mason, R. Marfil-Vega, I. Shaffer
Shimadzu Scientific Instruments, 7102 Riverwood Drive, Columbia, MD, 21046, United States


Contact Information: [email protected]; 410-910-0884

ABSTRACT

Interest in the analysis of methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide is significantly increasing due to industrial efforts to achieve carbon neutrality and overall shift to processes based on green chemistry. Examples of these processes where the analysis of the gases mentioned above is essential include increasingly more water resource recovery facilities moving to generate their own energy by means of using methane generated during on-site (anaerobic) sludge digestion and projects focused on energy production from algae that are being scaled-up. These chemicals are notorious greenhouse gases and are responsible for the greenhouse effect, the absorbance and emission of infrared energy emitted by the Earth. As sunlight strikes the surface of the Earth, some of the infrared light is reflected into the atmosphere. These greenhouse gases absorb that infrared energy and reflect it back towards the Earth. These chemicals are commonly quantified by GC methods using packed columns. The novel gas chromatograph system that we will present here enables the exceptionally fast, easy, quantitative analysis of three major greenhouse gases (methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide) using capillary columns with a run time of less than 4 minutes. The short run times and low detection limits of the system make this analyzer the perfect monitoring tool for environmental process control in green chemistry.