TEMPERATURE EFFECT ON THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY DETECTOR IN GASES (CARBON DIOXIDE, PROPANE AND CARBON MONOXIDE) ANALYSIS: A GAS CHROMATOGRAPHY EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Vehicle exhaust gas component analysis, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), propane (C3H8), and carbon monoxide (CO) is of great importance to support controlling program for the atmospheric gases below the allowable levels. Among all the available methods, the gas chromatography with thermal conductivity detector (GC-TCD) was used to achieve the study purpose. However, in the real application, the operational parameter of the GC-TCD have to be firstly well optimized. In this study, the effect of detector temperature on the GC-TCD parameters including, retention times, sensitivity, selectivity, precision, limit of detection (LoD), and limit of quantitation (LoQ) were evaluated, while other operational parameters of GC-TCD were kept the same. The result shows that most of the investigated parameters such as retention times and selectivity were unaffected by detector temperature changes. On the other hands, the GC-TCD sensitivity, precision, LoD, and LoQ were significantly affected by changes in the detector temperature. In general, findings of this study indicated that the optimum detector temperature of GC-TCD for the analysis of CO2, CO, and C3H8 was found to be 150°C by keeping constant for other operational parameters.