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The new HiPCO-3G makes use of a controlled Nickel/Iron Carbonyl generator to produce precise amounts of catalyst. The levels of catalyst max out at a few ppb as we will only need a few micrograms of the catalyst every minute. Now imagine trying to measure this level of Carbonyls in a small 10ml sample of the gas stream. It’d a bit hard. We tried looking for commercially availble techniques that would work for us. The last published Nickel Carbonyl detection at ppb levels dates back to the late 70’s ! And this made use of an FTIR. From the industry we learned of RaePID, flow measurement, UV luminiscense and a host of other techniques but none had the detection limits or stringent accuracies we need.
We decided to build a detector that would serve our purpose. It works on Chemiluminiscense and is theoretically sensitive to ppt levels of Nickel/Iron Carbonyl. The best part is that it can separately measure Nickel & Iron Carbonyl! and the results can be monitored in real time with a repeatable accuracy.