Novel characterization techniques for pitches and coal slurries using Fourier transform infrared spectrometry

Abstract Novel measurement techniques for Fourier transform infrared spectrometry, namely the scattering filter (SFM) and scattering dilution (SDM) methods combined with ellipsoidal mirrors were applied to highly scattering samples, for example, petroleum pitch and coal slurry for detailed analyses of their structure. The technique provided excellent spectra of low background, high signal-to-noise ratio and high signal-to-background ratio, sometimes detecting new absorption bands which had never been observed by the conventional KBr pellet method. SDM and SFM with ellipsoidal mirrors are useful for solid and thick slurry samples, respectively.