Methods for near simultaneous chemiluminescent sulfur and nitrogen detection
AssigneeAntek Instruments, Inc.
InventorsXinwei Yan, Eugene Malcolm Fujinari
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method and apparatus are disclosed for the near simultaneous detection of light emitted from ozone induced chemiluminescence of nitrogen and sulfur species capable of undergoing ozone induced chemiluminescence in a single instrument. A sample containing sulfur and/or nitrogen is first subjected to an oxidative/reductive process which generates ozone reactive nitrogen and sulfur species which are then forwarded to an specially designed ozone/detector chamber. The ozone reactive species are brought in contact with ozone in the special chamber and the chemiluminescence of the nitrogen species and the sulfur species are measured and quantitated.
Claims14
A method for detecting nitrogen and sulfur chemiluminescence comprising the steps of:
- a. converting a portion of a nitrogen and sulfur content of a sample in a heated chamber in the presence of an oxidizing agent and a reducing agent into a detectable concentration of nitrogen and sulfur species capable of undergoing ozone induced chemiluminescence;
- b. contacting the converted sample of step (a) with ozone to product meta-stable nitrogen and sulfur species in a single reaction/detection chamber including at least two sub-chambers, a nitrogen chemiluminescence detector associated with the first sub-chamber, and a sulfur chemiluminescence detector associated with the second sub-chamber, where the chamber is designed to inhibit light propagation between the sub-chambers;
- c. detecting a nitrogen chemiluminescence derived from the meta-stable nitrogen species and a sulfur chemiluminescence derived from the meta-stable sulfur species in the reaction/detection chamber so that the nitrogen chemiluminescence does not substantially interference with detecting the sulfur chemiluminescence in the sulfur detector and the sulfur chemiluminescence does not substantially interfere with detecting the nitrogen chemiluminescence in the nitrogen detector.
The method of clam 1, wherein the heated chamber is a furnace.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.