Indirect gas chromatographic measurement of water for process streams.

摘要

This project was conducted to develop a moisture measurement method for process gas streams of fossil fuels. Objective was to from pyrolysis to measure the molar concentration of water in a gas stream without flow measurements. The method developed has been incorporated into the hydrocarbon gas analysis method currently used at Western Research Institute. A literature search of types of direct measuring moisture sensors was conducted, and a list of sensors available is given; most of them could not survive in the environment of the process streams. Indirect methods of measuring water involve changing the water via reaction to a compound that can be more readily measured. These methods react water with various reagents to form hydrogen, acetylene, and acetone. The method chose for this study uses a calcium carbide reaction column to convert the water present in the gas stream to acetylene for analysis. Relative deviation for the daily determination of water varied from 0.5 to 3.4%. The method chosen was tested for linearity over a wide range of gas stream water content. Response over 2 to 15 mole % water appears to be linear with a correlation coefficient of 0.991.