In the first work package, user requirements were established, competing technologies in the optical domain and beyond the optical domain were evaluated – specifically chromatographic techniques. It was found that technology-wise, shorter hydrocarbons C1-C7 are a match for the proposed technology. Analytical tasks with even longer chains often feature a very large variety of compounds, for which infrared spectroscopy does not provide sufficient selectivity. The detailed findings of Work Package 1 are summarized in a confidential report.
Subsequently, feasibility was shown in work package 2, where measurements of gas phase hydrocarbons were taken to demonstrate the applicability of QCL dual-comb spectroscopy for measurement tasks of process analytical relevance. In the experimental setup, the beam from the IRis-Core emitter unit was directed into an IRcell-S4 multi-pass gas cell. The multi-pass cell increases the effective pathlength of the beam through the sample gas to 4 m while maintaining a small footprint and gas volume of only 31 ml. The pressure in the gas cell was reduced to 100 mbar to narrow down the absorption features of the gases. Results were analyzed in a multivariate fitting method.
Finally, the dissemination of the results was done in Work package 3, where the results were shown on three conferences and during a webinar. Dissemination on a trade show is also planned and a publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal is currently being drafted.
