Patent ID: 6653143
Filing Date: 2003-11-25
Classification: G01N,Y10T

Abstract:
A process for providing automatically only a required amount of oxygen for elemental analysis by complete flash combustion of samples in an oxygen atmosphere in a combustion reactor normally fed with a flow of inert carrier gas wherein oxygen consumption is minimized, comprising:experimentally determining a &Dgr; constant for each type of sample to be analysed according to the following formula: &Dgr;=Q01/QC1 â€ƒwhere: Qc1 is a predetermined quantity of a sample of the same type of the sample to be analyzed, Q01 is the volume of oxygen required for the combustion of predetermined quantity Qc1 of a sample of the same type as the sample to be analyzed, and &Dgr; is a constant for the type of sample to be analyzed and storing the constant &Dgr; for each sample as data in an electronic database inputting the type and quantity of a sample into a processor connected to the electronic data base to compute a value Qo for the volume of the the oxygen required for the analysis of that sample, by using the following formula stored in the electronic database: Qo=&Dgr;(Qc) â€ƒwhere: Qo is the volume of oxygen required for combustion, Qc is the weight of the sample to be analysed, &Dgr;is the constant for the sample type to be analysed, switching off the flow of inert carrier gas to the combustion reactor; supplying the required amount of oxygen by connecting the combustion reactor to a source of oxygen by means of a mass flow regulator and using the same oxygen flow rate used for the determination of OO1; restoring the flow of inert carrier gas to the combustion reactor at the end of the oxygen introduction step; thereby feeding in pulsed mode the required volume of oxygen QO to said combustion reactor automatically from a source of oxygen through a valve operated by a calculating device via a flow detector.