The Measurement Situation of Concentrations of Gaseous Hydrocarbons

Nowadays, there is an increasing number of vehicles on the road, and because of that, the air pollution is more serious than before. Although there is a three-way Catalyst Converter in every car, which can transform the CO, HC and NOX to the harmless ingredients like H2O from the exhausted fumes. It is not sure that all the gas, such as: HC can be transform entirely. Thus, many vehicle manufactures intend to find some equipment to control and measure the concentration of hydrocarbons from exhausted fumes to meet the requirement of vehicle emission of world standard. This report may help the vehicle companies to solve this problem. This report first mainly describes the specific chemical types of the gaseous hydrocarbon in exhausted fume which are Alkanes, Alkenes, Alcohols, and Ether. And it also posts the disadvantages of these toxic chemicals in exhausted fumes, for instance, it is harmful to human and it pollutes the environment. Secondly, the report introduces some approaches to measure the concentration of hydrocarbon in exhausted fume from vehicles, for examples, Mass Spectrometry and Gas Chromatography, The flame ionization detector, Infrared spectroscopy, and Raman Spectrum. Furthermore, these approaches are used as a medium to find the companies who can provide such equipment to test the concentration of hydrocarbon: Horiba, AVL, and Ocean Optics. The third, the product data from these three companies is listed and compared with each other. Finally, the evaluation result of instruments to measure the concentration of gaseous hydrocarbons is shown as an input to vehicle manufactures.