Impurity analyses of high-purity carbon monoxide gas using micro gas chromatography for development as a certified reference material

Abstract

High-purity carbon monoxide (CO) gas as a certified reference material (CRM) was analyzed using a micro gas chromatograph (micro-GC) with a micro thermal conductivity detector. The main reason to select the micro-GC was its compact size to provide a safe experimental environment. Thus, both the CO gas cylinder and the micro-GC were placed inside a draft shield with a limited small space. Peaks of several impurities were found in chromatograms of the micro-GC. The main impurities in the CO gas were helium, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. It was found that helium was the impurity of the highest concentration. High-accuracy calibration gas mixtures were used to construct calibration lines for the micro-GC. The mixtures were precisely prepared by the gravimetric blending method. Calibration lines had enough linearity and accuracy for quantitative analyses of the impurities. The values of detection limit of the impurities were 0.7–4μmol/mol. The purity of the high-purity CO gas was around 99.996%, which was the value estimated from the sum of the concentrations of the impurities.