Quantitech has supplied Euro Environmental Services in Ireland with a transportable Gasmet FTIR multi-parameter gas analyser.
With its headquarters in Drogheda in Ireland, and providing a range of testing, management and research projects in air, soil, water and waste, Euro Environmental Services helps businesses to comply with environmental regulations.
The company's stack testing teams were the first to receive Mcerts accreditation in Ireland and now provide testing and monitoring services across Ireland and the UK.
'We have a large customer base spread across a wide range of industries including those with complex emissions such as thermal oxidisers, waste incinerators, pharmaceutical and combustion plants,' said Geoff Fitzpatrick, Euro Environmental's managing director.
'We need to be able to measure a wide range of gases, across a broad selection of temperature and moisture contents, working with a large number of abatement techniques.
'It follows therefore, that we need reliable, accurate transportable technology that is sufficiently flexible to be able to accommodate such a wide range of applications,' he added.
The FTIR from Quantitech enables the company to offer monitoring services for a vast array of parameters.
The quality of the monitoring services delivered by Euro Environmental Services is vitally important, not least because it was recently contracted by the Environmental Protection Agency of Ireland to undertake stack testing on its behalf for a three-year period.
This contract was effectively a repeat of the contract that Euro Environmental Services had successfully completed in the prior three-year period.
The Gasmet FTIR gas analyser from Quantitech can measure any gas, with the exception of Noble gases, homonuclear diatomic gases (for example, N2, Cl2, H2, F2) and H2S.
The majority of FTIR analysers are used for process control, exhaust monitoring, emissions monitoring, workplace/industrial hygiene monitoring and research.
As a multi-component gas analyser, the Gasmet FTIR is suitable for customers that need to: analyse several components; analyse hot/wet gas (for example, hot humid applications for HCN, NH3 or HCl); or analyse any gas in complicated gas mixtures.
'Zero point calibration with nitrogen (background) just takes a few minutes and is required once a day,' said Quantitech's Dominic Duggan.
'Water vapour calibration must be performed after every major maintenance operation and at least once per year.
'Under normal circumstances no other calibration is required, which saves our customers a great deal of time, effort and money.
'Absorptivity is a physical constant specific to each gas, and the reference spectra (or calibrations) can be transferred from analyser to analyser.
'As a consequence we are able to add measurement parameters to installed CEMS as and when required.
'We can even analyse old recorded spectra in order to calculate concentrations of gases that were not initially required, which means that this instrument is often labelled as future proof,' he added.
The Gasmet library of reference spectra consists of reference files of gas spectra measured to date with different Gasmet gas analysers.
The library contains hundreds of spectra and each reference spectrum contains both quantitative and qualitative information about the component.
High levels of accuracy and low levels of maintenance are achieved as a result of continuous calibration with a He-Ne laser, which provides a stable wave-number scale.
In addition, high spectral signal-to-noise ratio and high wave-number precision are characteristic of the FTIR method.
This yields high analytical sensitivity, accuracy and precision.
The FTIR system employed by Euro Environmental Services is a portable system.
However, a fixed continuous emissions monitor is also available for process operators that require permanently installed monitoring equipment.
Both versions of the monitor employ exactly the same technology, which Dominic Duggan believes to be a major advantage because data from the portable version are directly comparable to the fixed system.
Euro Environmental took delivery of the Gasmet FTIR in January 2009.
This was followed by a short training course provided by Quantitech.
