Patent ID: 7127936

Claim:
An acoustic gas analyzer comprising: an acoustic velocity meter disposed and adapted to interact with a gas to be analyzed by emitting acoustic energy into the gas and detecting said acoustic energy after transmission through the gas, said acoustic velocity meter emitting a first output having an amplitude dependent on the detected transmission of the acoustic energy through the gas at a detection time; a temperature probe adapted to interact with the gas to measure a temperature of the gas, and emitting a second output indicative of a measured temperature of the gas, said temperature probe having a probe time constant that causes said measured temperature to represent a temperature of the gas at a time that does not coincide with said detection time; a signal processor comprising a filter supplied with said first output for producing a time-dependent variation of the amplitude of said first output, a temporally-adapted first output dependent on the probe time constant that represents a temperature of the gas at the detection time; and a calculation unit supplied with said temporally adapted first output and with said second output for determining compositional information of the gas from said temporally-adapted first output and said second output.