Feasibility of field detection and analysis of the toxic products of combustion

This work evaluates the applicability of chemical parameter spectrometry (CPS) and allied techniques to the design and construction of an instrument for the detection and analysis of the toxic products of combustion. The capability sought in the near term is field detection and selective quantitation of at least five toxic compounds of primary interest in the presence of other combustion products. Ultimately, the instrument will provide analyses of all or most of the toxic products formed during combustion that present a danger to human health. CPS consists of measuring a number of different chemical parameters obtained from sensor responses to a given analyte and thus developing a characteristic response pattern or parameter spectrum. A comparison of that spectrum with previously determined parameter spectra for a variety of compounds may then permit identification of an unknown compound in the analyte. The fundamental problem is to determine how CPS can be usefully applied to the identification of toxic components in complex gaseous mixtures of possibly 20 or more compounds. This problem has been addressed, after reviews of the instrument design goals and of the potentially usable instrumental techniques, by the extension of the capabilities of CPS to mixtures of up to threemore » or four detectable compounds, and fractionation of complex combustion product mixtures into simpler mixtures of not more than three or four of such compounds. 2 refs., 1 fig.« less