• Question: Can i have some more information on your gas analyser because it sounds intriguing. For example what gasses would it reconise?

    Asked by to Tom on 16 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Thomas Smith

      Thomas Smith answered on 16 Jun 2014:

      Hi there!

      The gas analyser that I use is called a spectrometer, but it’s a pretty cool piece of kit because it can be used in the middle of nowhere rather than in a laboratory.

      The kit that I use consists of two pieces. A lamp and the spectrometer. The lamp shines a beam of energy towards the spectrometer which we place about 100 metres from the lamp. During a fire, smoke passes between the lamp and the spectrometer and gases in the smoke absorb some of the energy.

      Gases are like TV channels, each different gas (e.g. methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide) will only absorb energy from one channel. The spectrometer can pick up all channels at once, so it can recognise many different gases. Here is a list of some interesting gases that we can measure with this analyser:

      Greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O)

      Air quality gases: carbon monoxide (CO), ammonia (NH3), hydrogen cyanide (HCM)

      Other gases: ethane (C2H6), ethene (C2H4), acetylene (C2H2), formaldehyde (CH2O), methanol (CH3OH), acetic acid (CH3COOH)

      + many other gases!

Comments