A Micro Gas Chromatography System for Real-Time On-Site Indoor Air Quality Monitoring

Abstract

Gas chromatography (GC) is one of the most widely used analytical technologies for separating and analyzing gas mixtures. Despite GC's high performance (high sensitivity, high accuracy, and high precision), it is incapable of real-time monitoring in the field because of its high power consumption, bulky equipment sizes, and high cost. Advances in microfabrication technology have enabled miniaturization of each key component of GC systems, which have led to the study of a micro GC system. The portable GC system we developed for on-site gas monitoring is integrated with microfabricated components of a GC system: A preconcentrator, a micro separate column, and a gas sensor. We present our preliminary testing results for a fully automated portable GC system. These results demonstrate its high performance in quantitative and qualitative analysis of gas mixtures.