Monitoring of indoor air quality by detecting individual airborne pollutant is essential for maintaining a healthy indoor environment. UV absorption spectrophotometry coupled with gas chromatography offers a reliable, self-referenced and non-destructive technique for the identification and detection of gas molecules. This paper presents a deep-UV absorption spectrophotometer coupled with a micro gas-chromatography (μGC) for the detection of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes (BTEX). The spectrophotometer was developed using a low-volume gas cell made of PolyEther Ether Ketone (PEEK) polymer tube, connected with a portable deep-UV LED and photomultiplier tube. The performance of the detection unit was evaluated with different concentrations of toluene (5-100 ppm) in nitrogen and a sensitivity of 107.1 μAU/ppm with a limit of detection of 1.41 ppm was obtained. The detector was incorporated into a micro gas-chromatography setup and high quality chromatograms, having all the peaks separated with good repeatability were obtained for BTEX molecules. The deep-UV absorption spectrophotometer has low-volume, low-cost, and ease of development and integration. While demonstrated for BTEX in a nitrogen carrier gas, the spectrometer has the potential to be applied to chromatographic analysis of different analytes in gas or liquid media.
Keywords: Absorption spectrophotometry; Gas sensors; Micro gas chromatography; PEEK gas cell; Photomultiplier tubes; UV LEDs.
Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.