An advanced commercial InfraRed Isotope Ratio (IR2) analyzer has been developed in Arrow Grand Technologies and the hollow waveguide (HWG) is used as the sample tube. By measuring the selected CO2 absorption peaks in the Mid- IR(MIR), the stable carbon isotope ratio, i.e. 13C, is obtained at a fast sampling rate. Combined with a GC and a combustor, it has been successfully employed to measure compound specific 13C isotope ratios in the field. By updating the single path HWG to 5-path HWG, we have also demonstrated its application for the environmental and health research. Here, the isotope ratio analyzer is minimized in size and weight to better fulfill the field deployment requirements. The size is reduced from 80cm*51cm*51cm to 74cm*33cm*46cm. After optimizing all subsystems, the minimized isotope ratio analyzer has a better performance. What’s more, the number of HWG paths can be selected to match the specific application. For instance, a 3-pass HWG is selected to conduct ultra-sensitive compound specific isotope analysis for mud gas logging, and a 5+1 pass HWG could measure isotope ratios of carbon with an ultra-broad CO2 concentration range of 300 ppm-47,500 ppm and a fast sample refresh and data processing rate up to 10Hz.
An advanced commercial Mid-InfraRed Isotope Ratio (IR2) analyzer was developed in Arrow Grand Technologies based on hollow waveguide (HWG) as the sample tube. The stable carbon isotope ratio, i.e. δ13C, was obtained by measuring the selected CO2 absorption peaks in the MIR. Combined with a GC and a combustor, it has been successfully employed to measure compound specific δ13C isotope ratios in the field. By using both the 1- pass HWG and 5-path HWG, we are able to measure δ13C isotope ratio at a broad CO2 concentration of 300 ppm-37,500 ppm. Here, we demonstrate its applications in environmental studies. The δ13C isotope ratio and concentration of CO2 exhaled by soil samples was measured in real time with the isotope analyzer. The concentration was found to change with the time. We also convert the Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (DIC) into CO2, and then measure the δ13C isotope ratio with an accuracy of better than 0.3 ‰ (1 σ) with a 6 min test time and 1 ml sample usage. Tap water, NaHCO3 solvent, coca, and even beer were tested. Lastly, the 13C isotope ratio of CO2 exhaled by human beings was obtained <10 seconds after simply blowing the exhaled CO2 into a tube with an accuracy of 0.5‰ (1 σ) without sample preconditioning. In summary, a commercial HWG isotope analyzer was demonstrated to be able to perform environmental and health studies with a high accuracy (~0.3 ‰/Hz1/2 1 σ), fast sampling rate (up to 10 Hz), low sample consumption (~1 ml), and broad CO2 concentration range (300 ppm-37,500 ppm).
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