Environmental Analysis

Protecting the environment is one of the problems of our century. Many laboratories conduct air testing and monitor industrial emissions to meet environmental standards.
Current standards like EN 14181 and ISO 14385 describe the quality assurance procedures for calibration and ongoing quality control ensuring proper operation of automated measuring systems (AMS) to measure emissions of greenhouse gases. Continuous Emission Monitoring (CEMs) operators are familiar with the need to calibrate their analysers using certified calibration gases.
Frequent calibration against an accurate certified gas ensures that the measurements from the stack will be as accurate as the calibration gas provided that the analysers don’t drift in between calibration.
Quality assurance for AMS requires a linearity calibration, over at least 6 additional points equally divided across the measuring range. When it comes to multi point calibration, GasMix helps to operator save a time and cost during these routine controls while assuring high quality of calibration.

Application examples of Environmental Analysis 

GasMix ™ : Performance control measures environmental analyzers

Automatic sequences were configured in the GasMix ™ software and interfaced with air monitoring analysers for SO2, NO-NOx and CO These sequences are used to assess the linearity of analyzers on their measuring range in six concentrations (80%, 40%, 0%, 60%, 20% and 95%) and repeatability three concentration levels (zero, 95% and national calibration concentration). The measurements are performed according to the methods specified in the standards EN 14212, EN 14211 and EN 14626. The residuals are calculated from real generated concentrations, not those calculated from the calibration curve. This implies diluter calibration on all generated concentrations.

GasMix ™: gas diluter-mixer that allows the calibration of gas analyzers

Power to create standards as a function of the application of time gives more flexibility to the user.
Environmental standards such as EN 14212 ( Standard method for the measurement of sulfur dioxide by UV fluorescence ) require a multipoint calibration. As pre-mixed gas standards are expensive and its delivery time is long, a gas mixer/diluter  is valuable solution to generate required gas concentrations on-site. GasMix ™ precision allows to produce accurate blends to the low concentrations. In addition, wide mixing range reduces gas consumption, the automation reduces operator time and the GasMix ™ software is an additional tool to help inventory management.

LiqMix : Biogas recovery

The biogas produced by landfills and sewage digesters, is an excellent source of renewable energy for electricity production. The composition of the biogas produced by these methods is complex and traces of silica compounds are present. Now this type of compounds is prohibited in many applications using biogas as fuel. Indeed, at high temperature, siloxanes are transformed into silicon oxide and corrode the metal surfaces of an engine. It is therefore necessary to propose purification processes, technically efficient and economically viable.
To assess the ability of a number of active carbon to remove siloxanes and hydrogen sulfide in biogas, one of our customers uses a gas chromatograph. This instrument needs to be calibrated gas standards but the siloxane is not easily obtained. LiqMix ™ is used to generate a standard gas from a liquid standard of octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane. This standard siloxane may optionally be mixed with a H2S standard. A trial may last several days.