Temperature-programmable resistively heated micromachined gas chromatography and differential mobility spectrometry detection for the determination of non-sulfur odorants in natural gas

A portable, fast gas chromatographic method for the direct measurement of the parts per billion level of sulfur-free odorants in commercially available natural gas is introduced. The approach incorporates a resistively heated, temperature-programmable silicon micromachined gas chromatograph that employs a standard capillary column for the fast separation of methyl and ethyl acrylate from the natural gas matrix. The separation approach is coupled to a micromachined differential mobility detector to enhance analyte detectability, and the overall selectivity obtained against the matrix is described. A complete analysis can be conducted in less than 70 s. Furthermore, these two compounds can be measured accurately in the presence of other common volatile sulfur-based odorants such as alkyl mercaptans and alkyl sulfides. Repeatability of less than 3% RSD (n = 20) over a range from 0.5 to 5 ppm was obtained with a limit of detection for the target compounds at 50 ppb (v/v) and a linear range from 0.5 to 50 ppm with a correlation coefficient of at least 0.997.