Final report of the pilot study CCQM-P110-B1: A comparison of nitrogen dioxide (NO^sub 2^) in nitrogen standards at 10 [mu]mol/mol by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR)

• Published in: Metrologia Vol. 49; p. 1
• Main Authors: Flores, Edgar, Idrees, Faraz, Moussay, Philippe, Viallon, Joële, Wielgosz, Robert, Fernández, Teresa, Rojo, Andrés, Ramírez, Sergio, Aoki, Nobuyuki, Kato, Kenji, Jeongsoon, Lee, Moon, Dongmin, Kim, Jin-Seog, Harling, A, Milton, M, Smeulders, Damian, Guenther, Franklin R, Gameson, Lyn, Botha, Angelique, Tshilongo, James, Ntsasa, Napo Godwill, Valková, Miroslava, Konopelko, Leonid A, Kustikov, Yury A, Ballandovich, Vladimir S, Gromova, Elena V, Tuma, Dirk, Kohl, Anka, Schulz, Gert
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 01.01.2012
• Subjects: Comparative analysis; Fourier transforms; Measurement; Nitrogen dioxide; Uncertainty
• ISSN: 0026-1394; 1681-7575

This pilot study compares the performance of participants in analyzing gas mixtures of nitrogen dioxide in nitrogen by comparison with in-house gravimetric standards using Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). In this study the same gas mixtures were used as in the key comparison CCQM-K74, which was designed to evaluate the level of comparability of National Metrology Institutes' measurement capabilities for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) at a nominal mole fraction of 10 μmol/mol. In the comparison CCQM-K74 most of the participants used chemiluminescence, with a small number using UV absorption or FT-IR spectroscopy, and thus it is of interest to improve understanding of the comparative performance of these techniques because they do not exhibit any cross-sensitivity to nitric acid (HNO3), which was known to be present in the mixtures used for the comparison. The results of this pilot study indicate good consistency and a level of agreement similar to that reported in the comparison CCQM-K74, demonstrating that FT-IR can be operated as a comparison method when calibrated with appropriate gas standards and can achieve similar measurement uncertainties to chemiluminescence and UV absorption techniques. An additional pilot study, CCQM-P110-B2, was conducted on the same gas mixtures in parallel with this pilot study. The second study addressed FT-IR spectroscopy when used to measure the gas mixtures with respect to reference spectra. The results of this second study will be reported elsewhere.